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AMERICANS OF 1776 



BY THE SAME 


AUrUOR 


SCHOULER'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED 


STATES (1783- 1 865). 


New and revised 


edition. 6 vols. 8vo. 


Volume VI (1861 - 


1865) sold separately 


as History of the 


Civil War. 




EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION (1783-1865). 


A shorter history, by 


extracts from this 


larger work. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON. 


Historical Briefs, 


WITH Biography. Constitutional Studies, | 


State and Federal. 





Americans of 1776 



By 
JAMES SCHOULER 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1906 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

'JAh 27 1 90b 

Copyrizht Entry 

CLASS O/ XXc, No. 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1906 
By James Schouler 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February, 1906 



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PREFACE 

This book is not a new narrative history of the Revolu- 
tion, nor a new arrangement of old historical materials. 
It is an original study of life and manners, social, 
industrial and political, for the Revolutionary period. 
Newspapers, magazines and pamphlets of the period, 
old letters and diaries have been explored, and the 
results of a personal investigation among hidden but 
trustworthy matter are here set forth. 

The substance of the present volume comprises occa- 
sional lectures given by the author before the Johns 
Hopkins University (i 901 -1905) while the present 
study was in progress. 

February i, 1905. 



NOTE 

The following abbreviations are used in 
the citations of this volume : M. G. for Mas- 
sachusetts Gazette; E. G. for Essex Gazette; 
N. E. C. for New England Chronicle; I. C. 
for Independent Chronicle; P. G. for Penn- 
sylvania Gazette; P. C. for Pennsylvania 
Chronicle; P. J. for Pennsylvania Journal; 
V. G. for Virginia Gazette. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 1 

THE THIRTEEN COLONIES AND THEIR PEOPLE 

PAGE 

Narrative of the Revolution distinguished — the dignity of 
history — area and population of our thirteen colonies — 
five leading seaports — Canadian provinces of Great Britain 
contrasted — love of liberty in Americans — early dis- 
like of France — colonial differences — provincial ranks and 
social grades i 

CHAPTER n 

FREEMEN AND BONDSMEN 

Indians and negroes in America — the colonial slave trade — 
negro freedom on British home soil — provincial slavery 
in 1776 — newspaper notices — white bondage — redemp- 
tioners, convicts, political prisoners and indentured 
servants — impressive features of white service — fugitives 
and runaways as advertised — the popular sense of free- 
dom II 

CHAPTER in 

CRIMES AND DISORDERS 

Vagrants and criminals in America — death sentence for 
felonies — branding, burning and other ignominious pun- 
ishments — the whipping-post, stocks and pillory — benefit 
of clergy — imprisonment for debt — rebellious riots — popu- 
lar resistance to Stamp Act and taxation — plain-speaking, 
physical infliction and retaliation — appeals through the 
local press 23 



viii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV 

BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 

PAGE 

Admirable domestic life — marriage almost universal — English 
law of wife's coverture — marriage infelicities and sepa- 
ration — a prolific offspring — licentiousness rare — strong 
family ties — neighborly assistance — death and funerals — 
the lesson to survivors — Christian hope of the hereafter — 
cemeteries and burials — a public funeral in Virginia — 
graves of American pioneers 35 

. CHAPTER V 

HOUSES AND HOMES 

Freehold tenure of land in America — provincial systems of 
settlement — wild animals and the wilderness life — trees 
and forests — homes and colonial mansions — building ma- 
terials and construction — parks and gardens — streets and 
drainage methods — paving, lighting and watch — water 
supply — household fuel and lights — style of equipage,... 48 

CHAPTER VI 

THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 

Accidents and personal exposure — individual nature of calam- 
ities — carelessness with powder and firearms — news- 
paper comments — earthquakes, tornadoes and storms — 
deaths by lightning — Franklin's invention and popular 
superstition — winter severities — dangers by snow storm 
or flood — fires and fire insurance — things lost or stolen — 
death and the probate advertising 60 

CHAPTER VII 

THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 

Post-office establishment in America — post-riders and the 
mails — postal regulations — detention of mails — the Amer- 
ican inn or tavern — names, signs and patronage — Revo- 
lutionary incidents — common carriers by land or water — 



CONTENTS ix 



PAGE 

stage-coaches and ferries — methods of transportation — 
stage boats and sailing traffic — baggage in the eighteenth 
century — friendly companionship in travel — bridges, 
turnpikes and ferries 73 



CHAPTER VIII 

DRESS AND DIET 

Differences of dress and social sets — fashionable dress of the 
age — ceremonious distinctions — homespun fabrics — wigs, 
umbrellas, spectacles, watches, carriages — diet of the 
people — abundance of fish and game — Indian corn, vege- 
tables, potatoes and orchard fruits — excessive liquor 
drinking — use of tobacco and snuff — table tastes and man- 
ners — taxed tea and the spinning parties — contrast of 
America and Europe in popular comforts 86 

CHAPTER IX 

RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 

Working habits of the people — rare holidays or vacations — in- 
door amusements among persons of fashion — balls and 
parties during the Revolution — select assemblies and 
dancing schools — musical concerts, vocal and instru- 
mental — concert manners — amateur musicians — lectures, 
wax-works, dwarfs, magicians — equestrian and other 
exhibitions — the American theatre — dramatic readings — 
general frolics, out-of-door sports, riding parties — fire- 
works 103 

CHAPTER X 

COLONIAL LITERATURE 

Little leisure for reading — private libraries and favorite 
books — pamphlets on religion or politics — literary style in 
vogue — American authors — able religious and political 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

writers and orators — Yale and Princeton bards — literary 
style and conceits — native essays and fugitive produc- 
tions — infant manufacture of books — proposals for pub- 
lishing — American edition of Blackstone — annuals and 
the literary almanac 121 



CHAPTER XI 

THE COLONIAL PRESS 

Feeble magazine literature — journalism proper and the 
pamphlet — meagre news — a printer's economies — eminent 
political contributors — anonymous and unpaid effusions 
— the News Letter of 1704, Gazettes, etc. — Revolutionary 
devices — printers' headquarters for wants — style of ad- 
vertisement — small-sized sheets of weekly issue — sub- 
scriptions tardily paid — delivery by post-riders — law of 
libel regarded — familiar wood cuts 142 

CHAPTER Xn 

THE FINE ARTS 

Ingenuity and imperfection — wood cuts in the almanacs — 
book engravings — steel, copper and the mezzotint — pic- 
ture sales — sculpture orders for London — Washington's 
experience at Mount Vernon — Protestantism and the 
masters — West, Copley and their successors — architecture 
and music — Jefferson's love of music 164 

CHAPTER XIII 

PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 

Christian philanthropj' — organized charities — contributions to 
Boston's distress — hospitals in the colonies — almshouses 
and pauper treatment — family support — penal discipline 
and the prisons — diseases of different epochs — scarcity of 
surgeons — medical theories and medicines — favorite min- 
eral springs — Washington's visit as an invalid 174 



CONTENTS xl 



CHAPTER XIV 

COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 

PAGE 

Education of the whole people — Europe and America — New 
England's public school system — the middle and south- 
ern colonies — religion in education — home influences — 
the free or grammar school in America — preparatory 
annex of the college — Franklin and Philadelphia's 
academy — English rudiments essential — night schools — 
the district school of the people — private instruction in 
the colonies — strenuous efforts for self-improvement — 
co-education and schools for young ladies — relation of 
the sexes for life's companionship — early simplicity in 
the studies 194 



CHAPTER XV 

COLLEGES AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 

Leading colleges of colonial times : Harvard, Yale and Wil- 
liam and Mary — five later colleges described — academic 
degrees in course — honorary doctorates uncommon — 
Harvard's Revolutionary example — college benefactions 
solicited — Hancock and other professorships — emulation 
of Harvard and Yale — scientific research — courses of 
study — college rules and discipline — subordination of 
freshmen — recreation and sports — Commencement cele- 
brations — academic pomp and ceremony 216 

CHAPTER XVI 

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 

The Puritan Sabbath — French Sunday observances con- 
trasted — "Merrie England" no more — family devotion — 
the Sunday meeting — colonial church establishments — 
Protestant sects paramount — Roman Catholic Church 
feeble — Episcopal clergy without a bishop — Wesley, 
Whitefield and Edwards — influence of the locaf ministers 
— New England, New York and Virginia in contrast — 



xli CONTENTS 



PAGE 

political preaching — colonial polity among the churches 
— calendar observances — colonial houses of worship and 
their functions 237 

CHAPTER XVII 

LIBRARIES AND CLUBS 

Libraries, public and private, in the colonies — subscription 
and circulating libraries — the library as an educator — 
principle of club fellowship — no club houses thus early 
— meetings at an inn or in private houses — fishing, hunt- 
ing and sporting clubs — Washington's club connections — 
Philadelphia's Philosophical Society — other learned so- 
cieties in the colonies — Tammany and the popular frater- 
nities — Freemasonry — Sons of Liberty and political so- 
cieties 255 

CHAPTER XVIII 

INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 

Industrial conditions in a new country — agriculture predomi- 
nant at the Revolution — tenure of land — mining, fishing 
and hunting — commerce with British capital — trade, 
wholesale and retail — auctions and private sales — simple 
modes of business — credit, cash or barter — signs and lo- 
cations — shops and dwellings combined — domestic asso- 
ciation of pursuits — the learned professions — bankers, 
brokers, etc. — individuals or partners — little or no cor- 
porate association — progress in American manufactures 
— British restrictions — the non-importation leagues and 
home industries 267 

CHAPTER XIX 

PROVINCIAL POLITICS 

Political party divisions — colonial restraints upon voting 
rights — representatives and their constituencies — aristo- 
cratic influence — oral voting and the ballot innovation — 
the town meeting and local self-government — political 
conference — local or legislative caucus 288 



CONTENTS xiil 



CHAPTER XX 

SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 

PAGE 

Provincial distinctions — the New England "Yankee," etc. — 
Atlantic settlements — the Ohio country — colonial causes 
of Revolution — British colonial traits — America's com- 
posite population — class distinctions in America — 
prophecies of independence and future greatness — Lord 
Kames and Franklin — indifference or covetousness abroad 
— dangers in ruling distant dependencies — Great Britain's 
error 299 



AMERICANS 

of 1776 

I 

THE THIRTEEN COLONIES AND THEIR PEOPLE 

THE glorious age of our Revolutionary struggle 
for independence has been well explored for 
setting forth the main incidents of that heroic 
strife and the illustrious deeds of its leaders, civil and 
military. But posterity as yet knows little of the 
American people themselves of that famous age. Some- 
thing has been sacrificed in the review — too much, 
perhaps — to what may be called the dignity of history ; 
and historians of the Revolution, led by the venerated 
Bancroft, have not only, as they should have done, 
given us a scholarly narrative of the chief events 
shaped out by those who directed from the heights, 
but there have mainly rested. Macaulay in his day 
took strong issue against such views of public narra- 
tion. And our own historian, the late Francis Park- 
man, with one of those strong expletives character- 
istic of him, used to condemn, so his biographer tells 
us, all such over-devotion to historical dignity, 
"Straws," he would say, "are often the best material."^ 
After his incisive comment, in which I strongly con- 
cur, save for the impolite expression, I purpose setting 
forth in these chapters some recondite material gained 
^Farnham's Parkman. 



AMERICANS OF 1776 



from miscellaneous but (as should always be the case) 
wholly trustworthy sources, in the hope of bringing 
out some features of an heroic age and its people, 
which should interest posterity and yet are unfamiliar 
to us; and I leave in other respects the grand pano- 
rama of men and events in the Revolutionary era as 
former historians have so faithfully described it. 



Looking back, then, through the vista of nearly a 
century and a half, we see thirteen subject colonies 
planted successively on our North-Atlantic coast; each 
population tending westward into the wilderness from 
its landing point, and yet gazing filially eastward 
toward the land of its origin, keeping close to the 
Atlantic seaboard and to the courses of those tribu- 
tary streams and channels which alone in those earlier 
days could support a genuine inland commerce. Three 
million and twenty thousand souls this whole colonial 
population was roughly reckoned at by the first Conti- 
nental Congress of 1774; but this, however, without 
counting Georgia, whose delegates did not appear until 
Congress reassembled in 1775, when the style was at 
length fully assumed of "the thirteen United Colonies 
of America."^ "Three millions of people, armed in 
the holy cause of liberty," was the eloquent exaggera- 
tion of Patrick Henry, in his immortal harangue; but 
to speak more literally, those capable at the outset of 
bearing arms, out of so large an aggregate of whites 
and blacks, young and old, men and women, bond and 
free, numbered more nearly 600,000 freemen. The 
most populous State or colony of the whole thirteen 
was Virginia, earliest settled of them all ; next in num- 
'i Am. Arch., 4th series, 396. 



THE THIRTEEN COLONIES 3 

bers followed Massachusetts, which in that era included 
our extreme eastern province, known as Maine ; Penn- 
sylvania (with the Delaware counties) stood third; 
while New York, though progressive and promising 
already, was surpassed in population by both Maryland 
and North Carolina. 

America possessed, when the struggle of these 
thirteen united colonies began in earnest, five leading 
centres of population (all seaports) — Philadelphia, 
New York, Boston, Charleston, and Baltimore. All 
the rest of her inhabitants — and much the larger part 
of them — were scattered about in smaller communi- 
ties; each distinct for local self-government, with its 
town meeting throughout New England, but with 
county units rather in the Middle section and the South. 
There was, popularly speaking, no West. Were the 
combined populations of our present Philadelphia and 
Chicago^ transformed, soul for soul, into men, women 
and children of America's united colonies of 1774, the 
total aggregate of that former era would be very 
nearly reproduced. Or were that transformation to 
take place, instead, from our present metropolis of 
Greater New York, some four hundred thousand of 
that city's municipal aggregate of 1900 would be left 
unchanged. The people of the present State of Texas 
alone number enough, and more than enough, by our 
latest census, to reconstitute and replace America's 

*The basis of this first Congressional estimate of population 
is not easily determined. British Boards of Trade had made 
earlier computations, and certainly from time to time, in various 
provinces, a local enumeration of the inhabitants had been 
officially undertaken. Thus Massachusetts ordered a census in 
1765, as also in 1776. both of which required that Indians, negroes, 
and mulattoes should be reckoned apart from the rest. 

"See census of 1900. 



AMERICANS OF 1776 



whole colonial population as it existed in 1774. Phila- 
delphia itself, the chief civic seat of all America, had 
that year scarcely more inhabitants than Oshkosh, Wis- 
consin, or Jacksonville, Florida, by our latest count; and 
fewer, considerably, than now inhabit Canton, Ohio, 
the home and final resting place of our late President 
McKinley. 



To utterly subdue a rebellious people, devoted to 
local home life and home rule, and at the same time 
thinly dispersed over so broad an area, was not easy. 
Yet the ''old thirteen" were not the only American 
jewels of the British Crown. England had other colo- 
nies this side of the Atlantic that never made cause 
with us. A map of "the glorious British Empire," 
published and sold in our leading continental towns 
in 1769, pictured eighteen American provinces, stretch- 
ing southwestward from the River St. Lawrence to 
the Mississippi, and including the whole of Canada; 
all this, too, without reckoning British islands of the 
West Indies. As a matter of fact, our own thirteen 
colonies, when uniting for resistance, tried to draw 
British Canada to their cause ; and the Articles of Con- 
federation show our Continental Congress alluring, if 
possible, those more northerly provinces to our per- 
petual league. But there were good reasons why this 
should not be. Canada had lately been conquered from 
France. Standing armies were a familiar incident of 
both British and French occupation at the St. Law- 
rence, while here they appeared rather as a new and 
startling menace to the people. Local legislatures, too, 
of at least a single house, chartered privileges, partial 
self-government had long been largely enjoyed in these 



THE THIRTEEN COLONIES 5 

thirteen colonies, under a home policy of easy neglect. 
Hence opposition flamed at once when Parliament 
asserted here a sovereign right to tax; but in the 
Canadian provinces it had been quite otherwise. Our 
own America, too, was strongly Anglo-Saxon, in- 
tensely Protestant; so much so, that the tolerance 
shown by the British Crown and Parliament to these 
alien French subjects of Montreal and Quebec when 
they came under the yoke was a cause of offence and 
provocation to our own inhabitants, though just and 
politic in itself. Great here was the indignation be- 
cause those French colonists in a region adjacent to 
Protestant New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were 
allowed their own French laws and the Roman Catho- 
lic religion to live under as before; indeed, in the Con- 
tinental Congress of 1774 we see this ''favor to 
Popery" among the complaints clearly specified in 
America's first united remonstrance to the King, 



Americans — historical Americans of the age we are 
describing — though rude, perhaps, as a people, loved 
liberty. In the rugged verse of one of their own crude 
poets of 1 772 : 

"The freeborn Americans, generous and wise. 
Hate chains, but do not government despise. 
Rights of the Crown, tributes and taxes, they. 
When rightfully exacted, freely pay. 
Force they abhor, and wrong they scorn to bear, 
More guided by their judgment than their fear. 

:}: :^e ^ * * 5^: ^t 

Let France grow proud beneath the tyrant's lust. 
While the racked people crawl and lick the dust; 
The manly genius of America disdains 
All tinsel slavery or golden chains."^ 

'P. J., Nov., 1772. 



AMERICANS OF 1776 



This fling at France, by the way, was characteristic 
of that eadier date. For in our thirteen provinces, still 
nursing the animosities of the late frontier war which 
had ended with Wolfe's famous victory on the heights 
of Abraham, it was the popular notion that "the Pope 
and Devil were inseparably connected with French 
faith, French alliance, and French commerce;" and it 
took the exigency of our new struggle for political 
self-existence, ripening into a league against the mother 
country with our late enemy, to soften that impression. 

Colonies are a crown to the parent country only 
when bound in filial ties of race, lineage, and affection, 
under a just and liberal supervision and discipline. 
Such colonies were fostered in the ancient time by 
Greece, and as Thucydides has said of them, "colonies 
were as free as mother cities, though less reverently 
mentioned because of their dependence." Some have 
asserted that it was a life necessity for our thirteen 
colonies to become independent ; and looking back now 
through the vista of a century and a half, we may well 
believe it; notwithstanding our ancestors proclaimed 
at the outset that no thought of separation from Great 
Britain had ever been cherished by them until the 
despotic policy of making them dumb tributaries 
against their consent was entered upon by the King 
and Parliament. 



"Everything which is, partakes of that which has 
been" — this was a favorite postulate of that sprightly 
and gallant Frenchman, the Marquis de Chastellux, 
whose book of travels during 1780-82 furnishes the 
first real trustworthy record of life in the new United 
States of America, as jotted down by a European 



THE THIRTEEN COLONIES 7 

sojourner. That acute observer notes, first of all, the 
fact that while all these American commonwealths, 
now practically unloosed from the British yoke, re- 
sembled one another in being democratic or repre- 
sentative in cast, yet traces of the original character of 
each separate colony still existed; and hence that the 
thirteen States differed somewhat in opinions and 
habits. Colonial society, while loyal, is apt to reflect, 
with however faint an image, the prevalent ceremonies, 
the passing fashions and tastes, of the parent country ; 
and a people brought up in allegiance to a British sov- 
ereign must have transformed themselves but slowly, 
even if surely, into a democracy. Reverence for Euro- 
pean institutions and traditions — a formal reverence 
at least — stamped these colonies from the outset; and 
class distinctions were everywhere accepted as part of 
the established order of things. 

When the Stamp Act was repealed, our provincial 
assemblies vied with one another in humble thanks 
to the throne for its gracious assent, voting heroic 
statues to George III. and the Earl of Chatham alike. 
Observe, much later, the petition of our first Continen- 
tal Congress, which besought a gracious answer from 
the King, and wished him a long and glorious reign; 
see how his sovereign regard is dutifully invoked by 
these distant subjects, as against the wrongs assumed 
to have been perpetrated by his agents, civil and mili- 
tary, and by Parliament. Thus far, it truly seemed, 
the King could do no wrong. It was only when the 
defiant instrument of Independence was published, 
nearly two years later, that our representatives spoke 
through their Congress to the monarch as to a fellow- 
mortal, and drew their indictment against George III. 
himself, as responsible author of all the wrongs that 



8 AMERICANS OF 1776 

had forced us to fight for freedom. During all those 
trying years which preceded collision and bloodshed, 
our colonists as a whole had bent with dutiful homage 
at the footstool of royalty. 

The ceremonious forms and expressions usual at 
Westminster were familiar here, in the press and in 
common speech, and were imitated, withal, in official 
intercourse with the King's governors and vicegerents. 
Men prominent in Great Britain, members of the no- 
bility, had the honor to kiss the hand of his Majesty — 
the high favor of an interview with their most gracious 
sovereign. His Excellency the Governor, in Massa- 
chusetts Bay or elsewhere, was pleased to prorogue the 
great and general court or assembly of the province. 
On the birthday anniversary of the reigning King or 
his Queen, and on the coronation anniversary besides, 
our colonial gentry at the leading capitals, and mem- 
bers of the honorable legislature, would gather for a 
banquet and celebration, under patronage of the Crown 
officials; and toasts were drunk, framed sedulously in 
the language of allegiance, leading off with his 
Majesty, and next the Queen and royal family. Even 
by the time that our Sons of Liberty had ceased offer- 
ing dutiful toasts on such occasions, British army and 
navy officers stationed in our forts would join civilians 
of the Crown and good Tory citizens in setting the 
pitch of loyalty. 

Titles of nobility had not strongly prevailed on this 
side of the ocean; yet the colonial press was full of 
London tattle and gossip, and scandals were reprinted 
touching certain peers and persons of quality, whose 
title might be denoted by a dash between consonants, 
where the printer meant to avoid prosecution and yet 
to identify the individuals. Civil officers in these colo- 



THE THIRTEEN COLONIES 9 

nies, and landholders besides, held posts and titular 
distinctions from abroad which our people dutifully- 
recognized. Peers of the realm sojourned in America, 
now and then, officially or otherwise. 

Even aside from a peerage, Americans had ranks 
and social grades of their own, notwithstanding the 
strong approach to political equality in so many prov- 
inces. The Virginia "Tuckahoes" of the tidewater 
region used in the winter to flock to Williamsburg — ^ 
"that toy capital," as one has called it — for the choice 
dissipations of a viceregal court; and between mean 
whites of the South and plantation owners, the social 
barrier was very great. In the simplest New England 
towns, where all congenial inhabitants came much into 
friendly contact, and joined in congregational worship 
and public discussions, the type of a republic was much 
like that of which Milton had approved for the English 
Commonwealth : 

"... Orders and degrees 
Jar not with liberty but well consist." 

Massachusetts and Connecticut were great exem- 
plars of ceremonial etiquette, and long continued so, as 
inherited forms of routine and processional pro- 
grammes still remind us. Both at Harvard and Yale, 
college students were long arranged in the class lists 
according to their family consequence. Even our 
Revolutionary press indulged the prevalent taste of 
pompously announcing great public characters ; thus, 
in 1776, "arrived in Boston from Philadelphia, that 
most worthy and patriotic gentleman, the Hon. Samuel 
Adams, Esq., a member of that august and united body, 
the right honorable the Continental Congress."^ 

Aside, indeed, from the British official set in these 
'N. E. C. 



10 AMERICANS OF 1776 

colonies, we see much nice discrimination used between 
"Mr.," "Esq.," "Captain," and the Hke; "Honorable" 
being the appropriate prefix, and not superfluous, where 
one had served in the legislature; while officers chosen 
in town meeting were described with one such title 
or another. "Deacon," though in common use, served 
a less secular purpose. One often finds, to this very- 
day, more strife and heartburning in adjusting the 
claims of petty distinctions like these, than over the 
precedence of dukes or marquises; for the little things 
of life seem great to little men. Colonial legislators 
and writers for the press did not scruple to distinguish, 
in their public expressions, those of good family, or the 
upper class, from "the lower orders of the people." In 
one of our chief seaports, in 1766, on St. Patrick's 
Day, according to newspaper report, a number of Irish 
gentlemen sat down to a dinner of roast beef and claret, 
and celebrated the occasion as loyal and patriotic 
Britons, "with decent mirth;" while at the same time 
a number of Irish "of the lower order" dined at the 
same inn, in an apartment by themselves; and "they, 
too," it is added, "were orderly." 

Pepys, in his inimitable Diary, discourses very 
frankly of periwigs, laces and fine velvet suits, such 
as men rising in public station, like himself, donned 
for distinction from the vulgar ; and he tells how, when 
he and his friends entered a country church on the 
Lord's day, the rustics all stood up and the clergyman 
began his exhortation from the prayer book, "Right 
worshipful and dearly beloved brethren." That typi- 
fied England when Charles II. came to the throne. 
American social life was much like that in the quiet 
English towns; and change came slowly, here or 
abroad, in such respects, during the century which pre- 
ceded our Revolution, 



II 

FREEMEN AND BONDSMEN 

INDIANS made no great figure in our colonial life 
after the French war was over. Fresh outbreaks 
were feared among the copper-colored, and com- 
missioners for the Crown in America made pacifying 
treaties with various native tribes. Our aborigines had 
been much injured in morals by the white man's strong 
drink, but their indocile disposition saved them at all 
events from enslavement. Negroes, on the other hand, 
they "of God's image carved in ebony," were held to 
bondage, through all these thirteen colonies; and after 
South Carolina's repeal, in 1768, of a prohibitory tax 
upon their importation, the slave trade from the Guinea 
coast found a favorite port in sunny Charleston, whose 
rice and indigo were choice staples for a thick-skinned 
race to sweat upon. A press of 1765 mentions that in 
course of the eight months previous to July of that year, 
5082 negroes had been brought for sale into Charleston 
port, with half that number of hogsheads of rum ; and 
the rum and negro traffic went much together. More 
blacks, said the press of 1773, had been imported there 
for sale than ever before in a single month, and were 
sold profitably. 

For more than fifty years the inhuman trade, once 
fully revealed with all its horrors to civilized Europe, 
had been denounced by some of the ablest and most 
influential of home writers and moralists; but Parlia- 



12 AMERICANS OF 1776 

ment and the ministry catered to the commercial greed 
of London, and the traffic went on briskly, as before, 
blacks on the coast of Africa being- taken in barter for 
the manufactures and merchandise of various Euro- 
pean countries. More indirectly, slaves were brought 
over to America from the West Indies, where the 
culture of coffee and sugar kept them in brisk demand. 
The Pennsylvania Assembly tried to discourage the 
slave trade in that province by imposing a capitation 
tax, but the Crown would not approve the statute. 

Doubtless in fostering this traffic our colonists took 
a large share of the blame, as their descendants have 
borne the full force of the penalty. Colonial merchants 
fitted out vessels and embarked with enterprise in the 
trade; and, whatever might have been the casual pro- 
test, silence or counter-argument on this continent en- 
couraged the system to continue. Some, to be sure, 
protested manfully in the local press. ^ But against 
such, other Americans took boldly the cudgels, adducing 
in defence of the institution some of those arguments 
which became hackneyed and trite in our later century 
of irrepressible conflict; while one, who styled himself 
"a Southern man," showed in a Philadelphia news- 
paper, by a series of ingenious syllogisms, that negroes 
had no souls. ^ 

Emancipation on the parent soil of Great Britain was 
another matter, however, and there a liberal home 
sentiment might have its way without interrupting the 
imports or imperilling the wealth drawn from these 

*"Slave trading," writes a son of Boston, "is the abominable 
thing that the soul of the Lord hateth;" and in 1772, we see a 
Philadelphian inveighing against the system in a pamphlet en- 
titled "A mite cast into the treasury — or observations on slave 
keeping." 

'P. G., 1769. 



FREEMEN AND BONDSMEN 13 

distant dependencies beyond the seas. It was in June, 
1772, and only three years before Bunker's Hill, that 
"the great negro case" came up at the English King's 
Bench for trial on a writ of habeas corpus, where Lord 
Mansfield pronounced his memorable decision that the 
slave, Somerset, who had been brought to England by 
his master from an American colony, was thereby freed. 
Released in the court room amid loud applause, Somer- 
set, with others of his complexion who had attended 
the trial, suppressed all signs of extravagant joy, and 
bowed reverently to the Chief Justice and assembled 
members of the bar while withdrawing from the court 
room, overawed ; but two hundred British negroes with 
their ladies soon celebrated at a London inn, with a 
dinner and ball, the personal triumph of their brother 
from the plantations. It was to this famous case, and 
to the principle of "universal emancipation" which it so 
far established, that Curran, the Irish advocate, alluded 
in 1794, in one of the most eloquent and impassioned 
outbursts of oratory to be found in our mother tongue. 
Yet why should the soil of the British Isle itself be 
deemed thus sacred, when British domains beyond the 
sea were willingly polluted by a system of bondage? 
Lord Mansfield's decision, so the London press pre- 
dicted at the time, would make greater ferment in 
America than the Stamp Act itself, and most of all in 
the British West Indies, where now slaves were the 
chief chattel property. But such was not the outcome ; 
and in our thirteen colonies, though a sense of the un- 
righteousness of slavery deepened with united efforts 
made for their own independence by the master race, 
that institution remained practically undisturbed, on 
the whole, while Revolution lasted. Massachusetts, 
solitary and alone of these commonwealths, shook off 



14 AMERICANS OF 1776 

the curse by a determined effort, and deduced in 1783 
from her own new State constitution and declaration 
of rights the boon for all of human freedom/ 

That slavery practically existed in all America be- 
fore and even after the 4th of July, 1776, is plain from 
contemporary notices in the local press. "Negro fel- 
low" or "mulatto fellow" was the common contempt- 
uous expression for persons of this race, North or 
South, when published as runaways or as the subjects 
of merchandise. "To be sold, a tall, likely, straight- 
limbed negro of twenty-four;" "a likely negro boy of 
seven;" "a negro wench about nine years old;" "a 
negro woman with a fine child three months old ;" "two 
negro girls of sixteen for sale cheap" — such are among 
the current announcements in Philadelphia or Boston 
papers of that era. Sometimes we see negroes offered 
for sale on an execution against the master ; or to close 
out an estate, as where among the assets offered by a 
Massachusetts executor in 1765 were two negro men, 
a negro woman and a mackerel sloop. A sale "on 

^It seems that in October, 1773, a slave of the Massachusetts 
province, in Newburyport, sued his master in damages for detain- 
ing him in slavery. The jury returned a verdict in his favor, 
and the master appealed the case. M. G., 1773. But revolt, 
revolution and the disruption of provincial government so®n fol- 
lowed ; nor was it until 1781-83, when other test cases came up, 
of which the record has been preserved, that the Supreme Court 
of that now independent commonwealth decided that — however 
it might have been while Massachusetts remained a royal prov- 
ince — slavery had not now on that soil a legal existence. See 
5 Banc. U. S. (last ed.), 418. In 1776-77, in Massachusetts, as 
I gather from the newspaper advertisements, negroes were some- 
times offered publicly by their masters for their board and keep. 
After our Revolution and the treaty of peace, other Northern 
States took measures for local emancipation, by gradual means 
or otherwise ; the New York statute dating 1785. 2 Fiske's Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies, 326. 



FREEMEN AND BONDSMEN 15 

trial" we see announced of "a likely young negro 
woman, a negro cook, who can make jellies, puddings, 
and whipped syllabubs." And again, sardonically, "to 
be sold very cheap for cash, a sprightly, clean and 
healthy negro woman, about thirty years of age, 
possessed of every domestic quality except taciturnity, 
which is the reason for disposing of her."^ 

It was not uncommon in these years to sell off a 
slave for the avowed reason, not of his fault, but the 
want of work for him. Yet other and more personal 
reasons might be alleged. "To be sold or exchanged 
for a negro girl, a strong and healthy man about 
twenty ; the only reason for disposing of him, his habit 
of being out at night." "Negro crimes are many," 
complained a Boston paper in 1766, "and yet we still 
keep bringing in those creatures from Guinea; scarce 
one in a hundred of them good for anything." In 
various New England towns we see these servants out 
and about the streets and disposed to noise and mis- 
chief in the evenings — so much so that the selectmen 
would issue strict orders to the watchmen to take up 
all such negro, Indian or mulatto slaves as were found 
on the streets after 9 p.m., unless they carried lanterns 
with lighted candles and could give a good account for 
being out.^ In 1741, various incendiary fires were 
charged in New York's metropolis as negro plots, and 
while popular excitement lasted that race suffered 
vicariously for the suspicion. 

All the items here quoted are from old files of North- 
ern newspapers, chiefly those of Pennsylvania and 
Massachusetts, during ten years down to and inclusive 
of 1776; and many more like extracts might be made. 

^M. G., 1765, 1768, 1771, 1775; P. G., 1772. 
»M. G., 1765. 



i6 AMERICANS OF 1776 

So far as a Southern press existed thus early, a con- 
dition of slave traffic and slave labor still more repulsive 
was perhaps revealed; but while negroes were in the 
greatest demand for plantation life and the raising of 
great staples, their employment in Northern colonies 
was rather as menials and for petty farming and me- 
chanical work, and of course it was less extensive, 
especially in New England. 

But negro or mulatto slavery was not the only 
human bondage known in America in these colonial 
days. A large number of poor whites were in every 
province still held to labor and servitude by a tenure 
scarcely less degraded, during some stated term of 
years, whether for farm and menial service or as 
artisans. First of all were the redemptioners, so called, 
emigrating with unpaid passage-money from Europe. 
These engaged themselves and their families to the 
captain of the vessel or the ship-owner for a specific 
time after their arrival in the New World, that they 
might work out their dues. Many a poor Irishman 
or German came over from abroad upon such terms of 
carriage; and the hirer, when not paying down the 
full passage-money at once, would give security out- 
right, so as to indemnify the vessel against loss should 
the bond-servant run away. The middle provinces 
were, now and later, most familiar with the system. 
A hundred, just arrived by the brig Patty, we see 
advertised in Philadelphia in 1772, whose time was to 
be disposed of at the wharf — men, boys and girls; 
among them skilled laborers, such as smiths, nail- 
makers, skinners, carpenters, grooms and farmers. 
Again, this same year, a load of hearty Irish servants 
of both sexes from Cork was similarly put up, vary- 
ing in age from thirteen to twenty years, and suitable 



FREEMEN AND BONDSMEN 17 

for serving "gentlemen, farmers or traders." And 
once more, "various redemptioners, maid-servants, 
boys and girls; coopers, weavers, tailors, shoemakers 
and hatters ; their time to be disposed of by the captain 
of the vessel."^ 

Besides these white temporary slaves of debt, British 
convicts were shipped to our colonies in large numbers 
to work out their punishment as bond-servants for such 
as might choose to employ them.^ Nor were our 
thrifty colonial authorities indisposed to lighten their 
own local taxation and relieve their local jails by letting 
provincial criminals fulfil their penalties in servitude 
at private cost. Many condemned subjects had been 
brought up to some useful handicraft or occupation in 
which they were expert; and whether for household 
employment or as farm hands and journeymen, they 
largely supplied the labor market of our colonies. 
Political and military prisoners had sometimes been 
thus sent over. 

Once more, indentured service in this era was pro- 
tected by law ; and needy men and women would bind 
themselves out to a master in consideration of board 
and wages during some considerable period mutually 
agreed upon; while parents in humble circumstances 
took it as of course to apprentice their minor sons by 
indenture to a trade, thus to relieve their own immedi- 
ate burden. History shows us the parental Franklin, 
worthiest among Boston mechanics, disposing of his 
young Benjamin in this manner, and, after casting 



'P. G., 1772. 

^About 50,000, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is a 
trustworthy estimate. Between 1717 and 1775 not less than 
10,000 were sent from the "Old Bailey" alone, chiefly to Mary- 
land, Virginia and the Caribbean Islands. 2 Fiske's Virginia, 183. 



AMERICANS OF 1776 



about among other pursuits, binding him at the age of 
twelve as printer's devil to his ov^n adult half-brother. 

White convicts and indentured servants, young and 
old, of both sexes, figure largely in the columns of the 
native press of this era.^ Fine, healthy, self-enslaved 
servants were offered — not manual laborers only, but 
sometimes schoolmasters or surgeons. Convicts seem 
not seldom to have been transported fraudulently from 
the mother country in the guise of indentured servants 
or redemptioners ; and with the abundant influx of poor 
Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and other whites, who were put 
up publicly to be disposed of for specified terms, with 
negro slaves besides, it may well be apprehended that 
domestic service on the common-law equal footing of 
a contract of hire had no great prevalence in these 
colonies. Those cargoes of women shipped into Vir- 
ginia for matrimonial purchase, of which we read in a 
popular novel of recent date, may well have belonged 
chiefly to the seventeenth century; and yet we find a 
load of white girls brought over from Europe and 
offered for sale (presumably for marriage) from ship- 
board at Philadelphia scarcely five years before the 
first Continental Congress met in that city. 

Two impressive features of such white service in 
those latest years of British rule are observable, which 
ere the present day have ceased to be legal or custom- 
ary: (i) The service was not undertaken simply as a 
personal relation of employer and employed, but was 
freely assignable to others w^hile the term lasted ; so 
that, with a pecuniary chattel interest in the master 
disposable to third persons at discretion, the servant, 

*Thus, the Virginia Gazette of 1772 advertises an indentured 
servant thirty-three years old to be disposed of — a tailor by trade, 
with a stoop in the shoulders. 



FREEMEN AND BONDSMEN 19 

for the time being at least, might fare little better than 
a brute. (2) The specific service itself was often for 
a term long enough to be thought impolitic and un- 
reasonable, as we should view the law to-day. For, to 
say nothing of a child's apprenticeship during his useful 
minority, a person of full age might have been put 
under a service contract for five years absolutely or 
even longer. An unexpired four years' term seems to 
have been frequently transferred in this era, while five 
years was a redemptioner's usual time, and seven years 
by no means exceptional.^ Redemptioners, besides re- 
imbursing their own passage, would sell their minor 
children or themselves into service long enough to get 
a knowledge of this new country before starting in life 
independently. A convict's penal term might, of 
course, be a very long one. 



With thirteen distinct provincial governments in the 
vast and then impenetrable American wilderness, it is 
not strange to find these bondspeople, whether white 
or black, whether bound for life or for a fixed term of 
years, escaping from one colony into another and lost 
to the master's pursuit. No advertisements were more 
common in the press of this epoch — in the papers of 
Boston, New York and Philadelphia, as well as Vir- 
ginia — than those of runaways whom the owner of his 
time and labor sought to reclaim. Usually a reward 
was ofijered to any one securing the fugitive in any of 
his Majesty's jails so that the master might have him 
again; shipmasters and others were warned emphat- 

^One mulatto girl's time in 1769 is advertised in Philadelphia 
as having fifteen years yet to run; hence, I presume, she was no 
slave in the strict sense. 



20 AMERICANS OF 1776 

ically not to harbor or employ, under penalty of the 
law. The captors, too, of runaways clapped in jail 
upon suspicion and not identified would give public 
notice that the person apprehended would be sold for 
charges (like some runaway horse) unless claimed or 
taken away by the owner. Even our peerless Wash- 
ington, in April, 1775, is seen proclaiming a reward 
in the Virginia Gaaette, not for negro fugitives, but 
for two Scotch serving-men who had just absconded 
from Mount Vernon. 

Announcements like these in our provincial press 
were often accompanied by the rude wood-cut of a 
tramp with a bundle of clothes borne on a stick over his 
shoulder — the usual outfit of a vagrant travelling in 
search of work; and sometimes, by way of general 
warning, a two-horned devil was depicted in the act 
of seizing him. A terse and graphic description of the 
runaway — of the clothes worn, of his personal singu- 
larities, traits of character, scars and malformations — 
identified him in language more plain than elegant. If 
an immigrant had lately come over the seas, it was 
suggested that the peculiar odor of the ship might aid 
in his detection. If the fugitive was a man, he wore, 
most likely, a small, coarse, leather cap or uncocked 
felt hat; an Osnaburg shirt; leather or perhaps hair- 
cloth breeches, a homespun jacket, a snuff-colored or 
cinnamon waistcoat ; his head displayed his own short- 
cropped hair, and was usually wigless. If a woman 
servant, she had on a loose calico gown, a linsey petti- 
coat and plaid stockings, while a brass ring adorned 
her middle finger; her slattern attire was otherwise 
inventoried minutely from headgear to stockings. 
Many runaways were to be known by the marks of 
smallpox: this one might be identified by a stoop in 



FREEMEN AND BONDSMEN 21 

the shoulders ; that by scars of the whip upon his back 
or by malformation of foot or hand from some early 
injury. The publication of such traits and peculiarities 
ran often into malicious libel and ridicule; and, posi- 
tively or by insinuation, a fugitive would be charged 
with stealing his master's horse or pilfering from the 
family wardrobe before taking flight. The defrauded 
master thus took out his revenge upon the absconder. 
One indentured servant, a master of Low Dutch, is 
described as speaking through his nose ; a negro slave 
as quite black naturally, "but when challenged and he 
is going to lie, his eyes will twinkle and his face change 
color." One refugee showed his teeth when he 
laughed, or winked with the left eye; another, an Irish 
servant girl, took snuff immoderately at the right side 
of her nose, was much given to liquor, and "when in 
liquor was apt to laugh greatly." Various of these 
fugitives were "down-looking, dull-like fellows;" one 
talked loud in discourse and was apt to swear by his 
Maker; and very many were artful, pert, impudent, 
smooth-tongued, turbulent in temper, in the injured 
master's estimation, whether drunk or sober. One em- 
ployer in 1772, who took the full humor of his loss, 
published his Irish runaway lad in the Philadelphia 
Gazette in doggerel rhyme, and his poem of thirty 
lines — fugitive poetry — embraced the usual points of 
such description. 



Men of a master race holding others in obedience 
may yet cherish a vigorous sense of freedom, and detest 
all the more for themselves, from the contrast with 
which they are familiar, whatever might reduce them 
to the social condition of their vassals. "Britons never 



22 AMERICANS OF 1776 

can be slaves," was the burden of a favorite national 
song, still remembered ; and a corresponding sentiment 
was shown in colonial appeals of this stirring epoch for 
liberty or death. "A vile system of slavery like that 
of Domitian is preparing for us," writes a patriot con- 
tributor to the press in 1775 ; "before God and man we 
are right." But New England's sons were nearest to 
a republic. What nobler type of yeomanry has the 
world ever witnessed than they who gathered on Lex- 
ington common at the roll of the drum, on the gray 
dawn of that eventful 19th of April, to seal as martyrs 
their devotion to the sacred cause of liberty and self- 
rule? Seventy minute-men drew up in line to with- 
stand a royal disciplined force of more than ten times 
their own number, and the fatal volley, fired to break 
and scatter them, signalled to mankind the loss forever 
of European supremacy in this New World. "Stand 
your ground," said their sturdy captain, as the fatal 
moment approached ; "don't fire unless fired upon ; but 
if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." 



Ill 

CRIMES AND DISORDERS 

NEITHER in England nor in these English 
settlements of America did the law relax its 
severity toward criminals while the author- 
ity of the British Crown lasted. Nor need we deem it 
strange that, in our far-away wilderness, crimes were 
committed of which a local community took peculiar 
cognizance to detect, punish and hold in check. While 
law-abiding people were greatly in the majority, re- 
specting the lives and property of one another, therewas 
throughout a drifting element of the lawless and repro- 
bate, largely recruited from the runaway servants and 
convicts I have described, who roamed from province 
to province committing crimes — not to add those needy 
and disreputable vagrants out of caste abroad who had 
come over the Atlantic to better their chances in a 
new world, but brought with them vicious tastes and 
habits. 

Such incidents are natural to the colonizing of a new 
country; and though there must have been little, com- 
paratively, to steal where portable wealth increased so 
slowly, crime kept in practice. Footpads abounded, 
horse and cattle stealers, petty thieves and burglars, 
forgers and counterfeiters. A prudent freeman carried 
his loaded pistol as he journeyed with money about his 
person, and highway robberies committed after dusk 
in the lonely suburbs of Philadelphia were again and 



24 AMERICANS OF 1776 

again reported to the magistrates. A threatening letter 
would be sent anonymously to some thriving citizen, 
commanding him to leave a stated sum in cash at a 
certain milestone just outside that city on a specified 
date. In one province or another the lonely traveller's 
purse was abstracted from his cloak or his saddlebags 
by force or cunning stratagem; a farmer's house was 
broken into and robbed on the Lord's day while all the 
family were at divine service. In 1769, as we read, 
thirt}' armed men at the suburbs of Philadelphia way- 
laid all passers-by, with their faces painted black. For 
heinous and alarming instances of highway robbery, 
the colonial governor or the town authorities made 
proclamation offering a reward ; and the people of the 
neighborhood would pursue as a posse, eager to pre- 
serve good order against all disturbers of the peace. 
New Jerseymen by their own vigorous concert once 
broke up a gang of robbers in that province, whose 
accomplices were in New York and Philadelphia; and 
when, in 1774, near Westchester, footpads attacked 
a traveller, robbed him of his cash, silver buckles, sur- 
tout and coat, we are told that "his worship the Mayor 
of New York" sent out promptly a searching party 
which caught the culprits.^ The hue and cry started 
against offenders in one colony would attract notice 
and induce co-operation in other colonies if the crime 
was atrocious or ramified extensively in its plot. 

In 1 77 1, a gang of thieves was broken up at Will- 
iamsburg, then Virginia's capital, whose confederates 
were in the various neighboring provinces, negroes and 
housekeepers being alike implicated. In 1772, tlie work- 
house at Philadelphia was feloniously entered, and out 
of one of its closets was stolen a black walnut box, "a 
^Essex Gazette, 1774. 



CRIMES AND DISORDERS 25 

little larger than a wig box," which contained valuable 
papers and money ; for these were not the days of iron 
safes, even for public officials. Brass kettles were pur- 
loined from housekeepers, as well as silver spodns and 
mugs, coins and bills of credit. "Horse stealing is 
prevalent all over the country," complains a New Jersey 
farmer to the press in 1772; and by the time our 
Revolutionary disturbances began the ownership of all 
cattle became precarious. 

Humane and discriminating treatment of crimes and 
culprits dates from our political independence; and 
Virginia's famous bill of rights gave the first grand 
impulse to criminal reform for our English-speaking 
race. For while colonial relations lasted, capital 
punishment here, as across the seas, was visited upon 
many of the lesser offences, besides murder or treason. 
Abroad in 1777, two men swung from the same gal- 
lows at Tyburn — the one, a scholar and a doctor of 
divinity, for forgery ; the other, a low-lived wretch, for 
highway robbery; and while jeers and ribaldry and the 
hawking about of a culprit's last dying speech were 
incidents less manifest here, perhaps, in America than 
in a London crowd, the common people yet flocked 
to see a local execution with a like morbid curiosity 
and a brutalizing sense of delight. Men were hanged 
in various American colonies for robbery, for horse- 
stealing, for forging and counterfeiting, during those 
ten years that preceded the outbreak of Revolution. 
In Connecticut, one notorious and hardened offender, 
sentenced for burglary, was ordered to be loaded with 
chains, while a guard was placed over the county jail 
every night until he was executed. In New York, four 
persons convicted of burglary and horse-stealing — a 
negro woman and three Irishmen — were all hanged 



26 AMERICANS OF 1776 

together in terrorem. Burning at the stake was in 
England an infliction of the law upon one gross mur- 
derer in 1765; and in New Jersey a similar sentence 
was pronounced and probably carried into effect about 
the same time; while in the West Indies, certainly, 
roasting alive in the crackling flames was a penalty 
for crime not seldom visited upon the black bond- 
servant. Just as banishment to America was imposed 
on convicts in the mother country, as a lesser infliction 
than hanging, so here, occasionally, a province was 
seen experimenting with that punishment, though per- 
haps to no more definite end than to ship a reprobate 
out of the particular jurisdiction, to settle and annoy 
elsewhere as he might/ 

Of ''cruel and ignominious punishments" which 
stopped short of a death infliction or banishment or a 
long imprisonment, there are many on record in this 
country up to the very latest date of our royal establish- 
ment, and some of them were found effective, indeed, 
for striking terror into offenders of the baser sort. For 
"vagrant men" were a stigmatized class, and the usual 
policy was to keep them so identified and separate from 
the elect. Thus, burning In the hand was inflicted in 
Virginia in 1765, and again in South Carolina in 1768. 
A notorious burglar was in 1771 publicly whipped in 
Connecticut; one of his ears was cut off besides, and 
"B" was seared into his body with a hot iron. That 
same year, in New Haven, a mulatto was branded with 
an "A" in the forehead for adultery with a white woman. 
In 1769, a Boston burglar was publicly branded in his 
forehead, at King Street (now State), amid a crowd 
of approving spectators. New Englanders, in fact, 

'Watson's Philadelphia shows £25 allowed a sheriff for thus 
clearing four notorious offenders from Pennsylvania. 



CRIMES AND DISORDERS 27 

about the time that Massachusetts broke with Great 
Britain, had complained much of the prevalence of 
thefts and stealing in that section of the country, and it 
was claimed that the p'reater severity shown in South- 
ern colonies had driven many loose and lawless scoun- 
drels thither, who expected, if caught, from the com- 
parative lenity of New England law and the com- 
passion of New England juries, a light punishment. 
New York was a province where, at this early date, for 
the smallest theft, a petty criminal was carted through 
the principal streets, that he might be publicly viewed 
and identified. Under a new sense of provocation, 
Rhode Island denounced banishment against all roam- 
ing miscreants of horse-thieves, besides full forfeiture 
of property (if he had any) and a severe whipping, 
and death was threatened to all culprits of that descrip- 
tion who were ever caught and convicted in that colony 
a second time. In various towns of Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island and Connecticut, harsh sentences revived 
in these last days of King George ; and the ignominy of 
cropping and branding was superadded to whipping, 
before thousands of the applauding people. Another 
torturing sentence applied in these days was that of 
causing a culprit to sit for an hour or more on the gal- 
lows doing public penance with a halter about his neck ; 
and this sometimes while some worse malefactor was 
from the same platform swung sternly off into 
eternity. 

Often these tormenting punishments were accom- 
panied by the more usual infliction of whipping and 
imprisonment. And if the public disposition was to 
exempt one from infamous punishment on his first con- 
viction, a second offence was likely to be unmercifully 
dealt with. And these, let us recall, were not the days 



28 AMERICANS OF 1776 

of anaesthetics nor of the skilful knife of surgery ; and 
some of the unhappy culprits thus mutilated bled so 
profusely as to endanger life itself. 

Both in England and America, the whipping-post, 
the stocks and the pillory were instruments of petty 
discipline, in vogue for both sexes, until long after the 
Revolution/ A Boston woman took twenty-one lashes 
at the whipping-post for pilfering some stockings ex- 
posed for sale at a shop window ; a Rhode Island man 
bore thirty stripes twice repeated for stealing two yoke 
of oxen; and at Providence, in 1771, an old offender 
had to stand in the pillory for two hours with a halter 
about his neck and the label "notorious thief." Six 
women at a time were in 1765 lashed for immorality 
in York County, Massachusetts, and the more hardened 
of them were sent to the house of correction, whose 
regular discipline required ten stripes specially by way 
of initiation. In Philadelphia, a woman who had been 
caught picking pockets in the market was exposed for 
two hours on the court-house steps, with her hands 
bound to the rails and her face turned toward the 
pillory ; and when released she was publicly whipped. 
Watson relates that Philadelphians of the choice circles 
would send their stubborn servants to the jail yard for 
chastisement, with a letter of introduction to the jailer;^ 
and a like custom certainly prevailed in some of our 
slaveholding towns at the South far into the nine- 

^In the pillory the victim stood on a stool, with his head and 
hands fitted into holes, while stocks were for the feet, as one 
was placed recumbent. These long familiar contrivances were 
usually fixed in some public place. But the whipping-post was in 
New York made a perambulating punishment, the criminal, per- 
chance confined in a tar-barrel with his offence placarded, being 
whipped at each street corner. 

''Watson's Philadelphia. 



CRIMES AND DISORDERS 29 

teenth century. But colonial laws and procedure from 
the earliest times fostered class distinctions; people of 
quality were usually fined simply for the lesser trans- 
gressions, while the poor and miserable had to take the 
lash in ignominy. 

"Benefit of clergy" was a privilege long conceded 
by our common law to men of letters, so that they 
might escape the block or the gallows. A book in 
black-letter Latin was put into the hands of the con- 
victed person, and if he could read and translate it like 
a trained ecclesiastic — as "a gentleman and scholar" — 
he was only burned in the hand ; but otherwise he had 
to suffer the death penalty. In 1769, a burglar tried 
and convicted in Boston was seen invoking this priv- 
ilege. But a stringent act of the next year's general 
court denounced death for a capital offence in Massa- 
chusetts "without benefit of clergy," and in such phrase 
did legislation come to exclude the plea in other 
colonies. Compassion softened at times the rigor of 
the law in imposing sentence. We read that in 1771 
a young and beautiful girl under twenty was indicted 
with some fellows in Charleston, South Carolina, for 
stealing horses: she was found guilty with the rest, 
but the susceptible court was so won by her beauty and 
air of innocent distress that the judges let her go un- 
punished. Persons under sentence of death got some- 
times a reprieve or a pardon on the scaffold, the author- 
ities not seldom contriving a torturing delay for dis- 
cipline until the last moment. 

When it came to imprisoning men for their politics 
after these colonies rebelled against Great Britain, 
rescues and jail-breaking became quite frequent, 
whether on Whig or Tory side. Then again, we had 
jails and the jail penalty for insolvent debtors in 



30 AMERICANS OF 1776 

colonial days, as in the mother country; and prisoners 
for debt did occasional business in their. quarters. One 
quack doctor thus debarred of his liberty advertised 
his medicines for the liver in a local paper, and offered 
to supply all customers who chose to call at the jail 
or send in their orders through the keeper; another 
prisoner who wanted to dispose of 7000 acres of wild 
land on the west side of the Connecticut River an- 
nounced an auction in his jail chamber. Revolution, 
however, stirred strongly the American heart against 
punishments for misfortune. After an anniversary 
dinner given in New York City^ to commemorate the 
repeal of the Stamp Act, the remnants of the feast, with 
plenty of liquor, were sent to imprisoned debtors, the 
donors bearing their supplies in person ; and that gen- 
erous example was followed elsewhere. Our American 
States, their independence of Europe once achieved, 
led mankind in abolishing imprisonment for debt as 
one of the earliest of legal reforms. But debtors' 
prisons had been destitute of comfort ; and a New York 
appeal in 1771 claimed that the prisoners of that city 
depended entirely upon common charity in the winter 
season for wood to warm them and to aress their 
victuals, and that the bedclothing doled out to them 
was scanty. 



The rude audacity of our populace was in constant 
evidence in the several colonies after the Crown once 
entered upon its career of arbitrary taxation. When, 
in 1765, the baleful Stamp Act went into operation, a 
Boston crowd, collecting after dark, pulled down the 

*In 1768. 



CRIMES AND DISORDERS 31 

newly built house of the Secretary of the province, 
and broke into the mansion of Hutchinson, the King's 
lieutenant-governor, ruthlessly destroying his furni- 
ture and carrying off papers and private effects. Signs 
of riotous resistance followed generally in the colonies ; 
and to hanging and burning in effigy, our Sons of Lib- 
erty added the coercion of those appointed to distribute 
the stamps. In Norwich, in New London, in New York 
City and elsewhere, effigies of these obnoxious minions 
of the Crown were borne about in nightly procession and 
then were left gibbeted or else destroyed in a bonfire. 
Such puppets were made up often with a boot fastened 
to one shoulder,^ from which the devil was seen peer- 
ing out. Maryland patriots made ghastly burial of a 
printed copy of the Stamp Act ; a mock procession down 
in North Carolina bore solemnly an effigy of Liberty 
laid in its coffin, to the muffled drum and tolling of 
bells ; and then, pretending to feel the pulse and finding 
that Liberty was still alive, they marched back to a 
lively quickstep. Stamp distributors were waited on 
in every colony by local committees and forced to 
resign under threats of personal violence. He who 
resigned or recanted by speech or writing was wel- 
comed with huzzas, but whoever stood out obstinate 
was likely to be dragged through the town with a halter 
on his neck, while a patriot mob broke into his house 
and despoiled his goods. "Liberty, property, and no 
stamps!" was the cry; and majorities proved tyran- 
nous, though always with some clear purpose to be 
achieved, and not often for wanton or promiscuous 
violence. 

Such colonial riots were renewed when Parliament 
applied new methods of taxation, and the King sent 
^For "Lord Bute," one of the grim puns of the day. 



32 AMERICANS OF 1776 

his troops to America for discipline and compulsion. 
The scuffles between townspeople and the soldiery, which 
in Boston caused the massacre of 1770, found their 
counterpart in New York City ; and Maryland had her 
tea destruction on shipboard as well as Massachusetts, 
and more openly. Besides the Crown officers, revenue 
informers received rough treatment from the colonial 
Sons of Liberty. Our Whig patriots handled roughly 
the persistent loyalists, and were roughly handled in 
return by British troops on opportunity. Tarring and 
feathering made a feature of such demonstrations ; the 
victim was stripped down to his breeches, smeared 
on the skin with the pitchy mixture from a bucket, and 
then treated to the contents of a feather bed, after 
which the drum beat, the procession moved, bearing 
him in ridicule upon a rail or in a cart, savagely mal- 
treated. "Curse you," said a sergeant of red-coats to 
a Boston citizen thus seized upon, while the port bill 
was enforced ; "I am going to serve you as you have 
done our men ;" and we read, not strangely, of a woman 
who died of fright as she saw a man borne riotously 
past her window in that fearful garb of punish- 
ment. Personal suffering and disgrace were in- 
geniously worked into the infliction of such riotous 
penalties. 

What we call lynch law, then, is no new product of 
American life, but antedates the Revolution, and our 
patriot forefathers gloried in it. Our Sons of Liberty 
held many a secret conclave to discuss plans of local 
resistance, and in the evening a bonfire made upon a 
certain lot or common was the sign to gather for rebel- 
lious concert, often in disguise as well as darkness. 
But whether by day or by night, a crowd came readily 
together in those exciting times. 



CRIMES AND DISORDERS 33 

Downright and determined in their course of action, 
whether toward person or property, American com- 
moners of that day, like their contemporaries of the 
mother country, were disposed when incensed to plain 
speech, coarse, forcible and vulgar, and withal to mis- 
chievous acts of violence. Duelling, to be sure, was 
not frequent among our common people, being rather an 
indulgence of the upper class, and fostered by the habits 
of military officers ; but there were brawls in the coffee- 
houses and wherever elsewhere personal opponents came 
together. Smollett has familiarized us from his own 
youthful experience with the oaths and brutality which 
accompanied naval discipline on board a British man- 
of-war in his day; and the press-gang method for 
obtaining crews was long a disgrace to humanity. Nor 
were military officers of the mother country less over- 
bearing than those of the navy; and, likely enough, 
Major Pitcairn, who marched the royal troops to Lex- 
ington common, not only ordered our rebel yeomanry 
to throw down their arms and disperse, but swore at 
them besides, as he was reported by eye-witnesses to 
have done. Coarse abuse, with profane or indecent 
expression, too often accompanied a civilian's act of 
violence, religious though so many of our people were 
in their general course of life. Colonial almanacs 
would print essays on profane swearing, and a printed 
colonial sermon against "that abominable but too 
fashionable vice" was recommended to families for the 
frequent perusal of young people. Yet blasphemy 
against God or the Trinity, swearing, and Sabbath- 
breaking besides, were all severely punishable under 
our local codes; and by some turn of expression that 
distorted the irreverent word or phrase into something 
anomalous, the vehement man of morals was taught 



34 AMERICANS OF 1776 

to compound with his conscience or divert the denunci- 
ation of the law/ 

Where our commoner had a personal altercation, he 
would not unfrequently resort to the local press by way 
of invoking a public opinion in his favor. One man 
advertised injurious reflections upon his neighbor's 
character ; the latter would adduce proofs of his right- 
eousness or else retaliate. The hirer of a horse who 
quarrelled with his letter over the recompense published 
as excessive the sum he had been forced to pay. A 
general offender forced to recant would do so over his 
own signature, and many a Tory was compelled to 
such penance. We see one countryman humbly con- 
fessing his fault through the press for having slandered 
another; he publicly asked the man's pardon and prom- 
ised to be more careful for the future. For one would 
throw down his adversary in those days and then force 
him to eat humble pie. "Judge ye between me and my 
neighbor" was the frequent appeal, not to courts so 
much as to the community, 

^E.g., "I swow," "I swan," "doggoned," "darn it all." 



IV 

BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 

IN no respect were Americans of this early age more 
admirable than in the home and family relation. 
Marriage was honorable, almost universal; and 
men and women paired to rear a family and give the 
genealogy of the race a new progression. Something 
of that same devotion to their wives which the polished 
Tacitus had remarked of those savage tribes, our an- 
cestors, when the decay of Rome's degenerate empire 
supplied a classic but corrupt comparison, could be 
traced in these hardy Anglo-Saxons of the eighteenth 
century, who were peopling a new continent for a fresh 
example to mankind. At the pioneer home and fire- 
side, Americans of all social grades received an early 
discipline that fitted them for free institutions and good 
citizenship. The household made somewhat of a tribal 
bond, and industry, thrift, learning, religion, patriot- 
ism and the social affections were all taught in the 
family circle. Marriage — nature's true companionship 
of the sexes, contrived for the whole human race — was 
the settlement for life in each commonwealth ; a rugged, 
commonplace existence found in the home and help- 
mate, life's chief solace and recreation. Children, too, 
and the duplicated ties of marriage alliance and 
progeny to a remote issue confirmed one's hold upon 
the future and gave a personal zest to the coming years. 
Of the common wish then prevalent to marry and 



36 AMERICANS OF 1776 

settle in life, various reminders have come down to us. 
And as the old churchyard epitaphs so often remind 
us, marriage came, not to the single alone, but to 
widows and widowers ; for home was an institution so 
essential to the well-being of the race that neither man 
nor woman could well live comfortably without it. 
Sports and recreations, too, which brought the young 
and bashful of both sexes together turned largely upon 
the mimic choice of a partner ; the unmated one of the 
game, the odd number, was the butt of a company. 
And so did village ridicule pursue most keenly the 
mincing spinster or the crusty old bachelor.^ 

Since labor found ready recompense in these days, 
and simple station made simple social life, our 
marriages were early and prolific. The young paired 
for themselves and made love matches, struggling up- 
ward through poverty together. Unmarried daughters 
remained and served in the parental abode ; for women 
found mostly their sphere in farm or household work. 
Sons, however, shifted naturally for themselves, and 
by subdivision of the paternal farm found place for 
their own new homes; mating, multiplying and build- 
ing apart, or restlessly seeking out new scenes, per- 
chance to make new fortunes. Each town and com- 
munity stood firmly banded in upholding God's holy 
institution, though Protestants sternly denied the 
Roman Catholic doctrine that marriage was a sacra- 
ment, declared it a mere contract, and schemed already 
a freedom both in making and dissolving the marriage 
tie that threatened a future laxity. In general, mar- 
riage was celebrated simply enough, as befitted the 

^In 1756. under pressure of the French and Indian War, Mary- 
land levied a tax upon all bachelors of 25 years and upwards, 
classifying the rates by their several fortunes. 



BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 37 

social custom of the times; but station and circum- 
stances made variations. In some leading centres, like 
Philadelphia, marriage feasting among the fashionable 
was thought extravagant ; for hosts would send out 
cake and meats to neighbors who had not been invited 
to the wedding, besides indulging their guests. Com- 
plaint, too, was made that the married pair were kept 
too long before the gathered company, exposed to 
rough banter. It was common for the colonial press, 
when announcing a marriage in high life, to compli- 
ment the bride in set phrase as "a young lady of great 
merit, with every accomplishment conducive to the 
happiness of the marriage state." 

The old common law of coverture adjusted thus 
early the rights and duties of the married life — a sys- 
tem, by the way, far less harsh of operation than is 
generally supposed, and tolerable enough where the 
husband does his part well as family provider, and little 
personal property is brought to the marriage on either 
side. Real estate, that only inheritance of dignity in 
earlier times, was fairly preserved to the wife's blood 
relatives by our English law where she brought land 
to the marriage and died childless. But the husband 
was head of the house, and ruled the family after the 
Christian dispensation as preached by Peter and Paul. 
For divorce from the bond there was little show, 
whether wife or husband had misconducted, nor was 
legalized separation frequent yet or easy to procure. 
Man's discipline, if stern and masterful, compelling 
wife and children to obey, might be just and consider- 
ate notwithstanding. 

But infelicities occurred, as they always may in the 
marriage state, and now and then might be seen a 
husband publishing his wife in the local paper for 



38 AMERICANS OF 1776 

desertion, and refusing to pay a farthing of any debt 
she might contract while absent. "She has left my 
bed and board," complains one husband; "she has 
eloped," says another; "she has been very unfriendly 
to me," says a third ; "she has behaved badly with other 
men and unseemly," says a fourth, "and her im- 
prudence has reduced me to great poverty and dis- 
tress." One forsaken advertiser makes pertinent cita- 
tion from I Corinthians 7 : 10, 11; another threatens 
the law against all persons who may harbor his runa- 
way partner; while still another offers to reward any 
one who will land the seducer in jail, so that he may be 
prosecuted. The wife sometimes responded in print to 
the husband's accusation. One fair spouse retorts that 
the husband became an insolvent, and had used up the 
whole income of her inheritance from her father before 
she left him; another alleges sadly that she never left 
his home until compelled to do so by his cruel and in- 
human treatment in abusing and kicking her about. 
"I never ran him in debt one farthing," responds a third 
indignantly ; "neither has he ever purchased me or his 
infant child one article of clothing, except two or three 
pairs of shoes, for almost two years." And once again 
we see an unhappy wife publishing to the world that 
she had left her husband because he deprived her of 
the barest necessities of life and forced her to do servile 
work, such as taking constant care of the cattle during 
the cold winter months ; and this one appends an affi- 
davit he had made shortly before, which acknowledged 
her conjugal goodness and obedience and his own fault 
toward her. Thus again does the press of that century 
show how prone were our people to invoke public opin- 
ion in their private differences. Reconciliation healed 
happily some of such distressing feuds ; while Christian 



BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 39 

forbearance and a sense of duty, not to add the wish 
to keep up appearances (always strong in the feminine 
mind), checked or prevented many others. 



Marriage in this simple and sincere age was not only 
stable as an institution, but remarkably prolific; and 
such must be the usual incident of domestic life in a 
new country where they who marry are robust, and 
an offspring builds up society and increases the com- 
mon means of livelihood. No advertiser figured more 
constantly in the local wants of that day than the wet 
nurse with a good breast of milk ; and so popular was 
midwifery that one Mrs. Hallelujah Olney, a zealous 
anti-paedo Baptist and most estimable widow lady, who 
died in 1771 at Providence, after having practised her 
profession for thirty-six years, was said, in an obituary 
notice, to have introduced into existence upwards of 
3000 children. The midwife took commonly the place 
of a doctor ; and one in New London was said to have 
delivered 1200 children in her day and never lost one. 
Franklin, it is remembered, was the fifteenth in due 
order out of seventeen children, and a son of his 
father's second wife; and we shall find various other 
marriages of that era equally prolific if we trace back 
the genealogy of almost any of the famous families 
among our early settlers. For the first object of every 
new colony in the wilderness has been to increase and 
multiply, assuaging life's dulness. Men started in life 
as founders, they lived to be patriarchs. And the long- 
lived pioneer gloried in such distinction. Of a worthy 
man who died in 1771 it was printed, first that he had 
kept a grist-mill for seventy-one years and never took 
more toll than the law allowed; next that he left a 



40 AMERICANS OF 1776 

progeny of io8, in children, grandchildren and great- 
grandchildren. Another dweller in Massachusetts, a 
deacon, had died three years earlier, in his eighty- 
fourth year; "his life was exemplary, his departure in 
firm hope of a glorious immortality ; his progeny were 
numerous." In fact, it was stated that this pioneer left 
157 of his issue alive, including five great-grand-chil- 
dren. Another colonial veteran, older by ten years, 
dying about the same time, saw those of his fifth gener- 
ation before closing his eyes upon the world.^ 

In spite, then, of all decimation by exposure to 
casualty and disease, Americans of both sexes in this 
era had strong constitutions and often lived — the men 
especially — until long after fourscore, witnessing the 
growth and spread of the families they had founded, 
and widening immensely their own personal influence 
through multiplied offspring and marriage ties. Many 
a New England Thanksgiving or a New York Christ- 
mas of that era must have brought a family reunion 
indeed — enough, one would fancy, to burst the rafters 
of the old dwelling-house and cause the very walls to 
bulge; and everywhere the buttress of a home com- 
munity must have resisted all undue coercion from ex- 
ternal society. Households were united, though not 
demonstrative always in mutual affection. The pater- 
nal head made his authority respected ; sons, when old 
enough, were pushed out like young squabs from the 
nest, to fly and mate for themselves ; while daughters 
found there a sure shelter and refuge against the 

"'Died in peace in 1771, at Wilmington, Delaware." says a 
local press, "a pious, elderly matron, who had been mother of 
16 children, all married and comfortable; 68 grandchildren, 166 
great-grandchildren, and 4 great-great-grandchildren — in all 238 
living offspring — survived her: the generation of the just shall be 
blessed." 



BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 41 

possible ills and failures of life. Family discipline, if 
stern and repressive, was conscientious, grounded on 
Bible precept and example ; and parents aimed honestly 
to bring up their offspring to lives of usefulness and 
honor. 

Chastellux, visiting this country tov^ard the close of 
the Revolution, was impressed by the comfort and 
simplicity of our domestic life — by that "sweet and 
serene state of happiness," so he styles it, "which 
appears to have taken refuge in the New World." And 
again, he observes, "there is no licentiousness in 
America." Surely, here were seen none of those Love- 
laces of rakish inclination, such as Richardson and 
other novelists of that era portrayed so vividly for 
London, whose idle game of life seemed chiefly to con- 
sist in intriguing for the ruin of virtuous women. So 
much of the common concern, indeed, was absorbed 
in the domestic pursuits of life that social scandals 
related most to the mishaps of lovemaking. And for 
matches that turned out ill-suited and miserable, social 
compassion gave without cynicism its alleviating sym- 
pathy ; while the aggrieved one sought first of all that 
medicine, more potent for the soul's lasting good than 
the surgery of divorce can ever afford — to make the 
best of things. 



The whole tendency, then, of our primitive American 
life was to develop the natural affections and make 
people neighborly and helpful to one another, recog- 
nizing those common joys and sorrows of humanity 
of which all ages and conditions partook. Hence, and 
because, too, of the strong religious sentiment of a 
Christian people, much was made of individual death 



42 AMERICANS OF 1776 

and of paying last tributes to the departed. The here- 
after, with its rewards and punishments, was the goal 
upon which most had set their minds as readers of the 
Bible and devout believers; and at each exit of life was 
an earthly judgment to be passed in the little com- 
munity, forecasting the Divine, with preaching of 
sermon and exhortation, according as the example was 
felt for good or evil. It still holds true in our remote 
Atlantic villages that a funeral brings neighbors to- 
gether more readily than any other private occasion. 
We smile at the quaint epitaphs on tombstones of that 
earlier century; yet the "amiable consort" and those 
other high-flown terms of endearing expression were 
set phrases of the day, and a certain elegiac strain of 
tombstone expression took its usual pitch from a local 
pastor's discourse or the conventional tributes of 
friends and relatives in the newspapers. In that age 
of sermonizing, funeral sermons preached on the 
sombre occasions of bereavement were widely printed 
and read; and obituaries dwelt much more than our 
present fashion would commend upon the details of 
death-bed suffering or of some lingering illness. Obitu- 
ary rhetoric shaped its expression in prose cr poetry 
with intensity of seriousness : 

"Her hearse moved slow and sad to meet the tomb, 
While real sorrow sat on every plume; 
While many groans her dear remains convey 
To her cold lodging in her bed of clay." 

One funeral sermon sets figuratively forth the dying 
utterances of a good woman of the flock : "With these 
words she closed her mortal drama; her next were 
heard in Heaven." And, to quote the eulogy of a dis- 
tinguished officer who died in Philadelphia in 1772: 
"There scarce appeared a struggle between soul and 



BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 43 

body at parting. The former in an instant took its 
flight to the reahn of spirits, and the latter without 
a groan dropped down to embrace its kindred earth." 

Press and the pulpit alike in colonial times made 
note of the death lesson to be inculcated upon the 
living. Seeing the remains was an important incident 
of every well-ordered funeral, as it usually is, perhaps, 
to this day; and in various presses the versifier was 
seen arousing his Muse "on seeing," or even "upon a 
supposed view of" the corpse. So important, withal, 
in a public sense, were these last functions of mortality, 
that funerals in the winter time were sometimes an- 
nounced to take place on a certain date with express 
reservation as to the weather. 

Mortal sickness, with, if need be, its long-drawn 
ailment and suffering, was met in this age with forti- 
tude and Christian resignation. A suicide was some- 
times seen reported, but self-destruction was then very 
rare. The sane and prosaic routine of life, incessant 
industry, the manifold family ties — all aided conscien- 
tious views of a hereafter and of man's moral account- 
ability. Christianity opposes the thought of suicide 
and leaves the mortal chances to one's Maker. And 
the old English law still widely obtained in these 
colonies, which denied a Christian burial to such as took 
their own lives. 

We read much of enamelled mourning rings, such 
as were then worn considerably by friends and rela- 
tives ; also of distributing "scarfs" and gloves. In the 
dress and decorations for funerals of high personages 
some incongruous outlays were incurred for friends as 
well as family. More incongruous still was apt to be 
the lavish expenditure for refreshments — in punch and 
hot wine particularly. Families themselves might be 



44 AMERICANS OF 1776 

very large, reckoning alone the near relatives by blood 
and marriage; yet open hospitality at funerals went 
much farther. Agitation arose, in fact, touching the 
customary funeral expenses, as trouble dawned with 
the mother country and our colonists felt the pinch of 
approaching poverty. 

The loved one was laid tenderly to rest in the family 
vault or churchyard lot; or perhaps in some God's 
acre specially fenced off from one's own farm or planta- 
tion, or in some larger parcel of land laid out for gen- 
eral use. Pagan cremation, which sets economy 
against feeling or sentiment, and ignores the resurrec- 
tion of the body, if not resurrection altogether, had of 
course no charm for these simpler Christians; and to 
all laboratory methods of human disposal is the objec- 
tion that they blunt the finer sensibilities and may even 
tempt to murderous experiment upon the dying, whose 
heirs are impatient. Leave tenderly the remains of 
our fellow-mortal for nature's own methods of decay 
to operate, and we trust to God and assume, at least, no 
personal responsibility to meddle. Perhaps, however, 
the evangelism of this earlier age invoked too read- 
ily the horrors of the grave, as of death itself, to arouse 
the living to repentance. It was "Hark! from the 
tombs a doleful sound !" The idea came later to us of 
large and attractive cemeteries, like Mount Auburn, 
Forest Hills, Greenwood, Laurel, Oak Hill — reposeful 
cities of the dead, where art and nature blend their 
landscape charms with choice marble and granite 
monuments to foster the hope of a common immor- 
tality and teach the living to cherish the memory of 
the departed. For the churchyard fitly protects its 
parish dead only while the mute environs linger un- 
changed through rural generations, as in Stoke-Pogis 



BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 45 

of our old English home, which inspired the noblest 
elegy of our tongue that poetic art ever chiselled into 
expression. 

One of the stateliest public funerals of colonial times 
took place in Virginia in 1 770, when Lord Botetourt — 
a nobleman much beloved and a governor of that prov- 
ince — was buried. At Williamsburg, the little capital 
of that oldest colony, the bells tolled, and dignitaries, 
with the military, repaired together to the "palace" or 
mansion-house in early afternoon. The corpse, en- 
closed in its leaden coffin, adorned with silver handles 
and a silver plate, was placed upon a hearse, and the 
solemn procession marched to the church. Two mutes 
preceded on each side of the hearse, outward of whom 
walked the pallbearers, comprising six of his Majesty's 
council, with the Honorable Speaker and Richard 
Bland, Esq., of the House of Burgesses; his Excel- 
lency's servants, in deep mourning, attended also, with 
the gentlemen of the clergy, the professors of William 
and Mary College, the clerk of the church and the 
organist besides. Immediately after the hearse thus 
attended (so the newspaper tells us) came the chief 
mourners, the faculty of the college following, and 
the mayor, recorder and aldermen of Williamsburg 
with the mace borne before them ; the gentlemen of the 
law and the clerk of the general court. For the colony, 
the capital, the college itself, all bore the names of 
British kings and queens. Students of William and 
Mary College who had been detailed as ushers wore 
white hat-bands and gloves; and behind all these a 
numerous body of citizens brought up the rear of the 
procession, walking two and two. In the church, which 
was of the established English faith, a black carpet 
had been spread for the coffin, which was covered with 



46 AMERICANS OF 1776 

crimson velvet, while the burial service was read ; altar, 
pulpit and his Excellency's pew were hung suitably in 
black. Following a sermon, the mournful procession 
resumed its march through William and Mary's 
grounds to a chapel, where the remains were deposited 
in a vault, the militia outside firing three volleys as a 
parting salute. The council and House of Burgesses 
went into deep mourning for Lord Botetourt, and so, 
too, as their spontaneous expression, did many gentle- 
men of the colony ; for this nobleman had made a highly 
estimable governor of Virginia, and his loss was deeply 
deplored. 



The exaggeration of grief witnessed in the funeral 
and burial rites of our ancestors may provoke an irrev- 
erent age to mirth. For unless one's sympathies go 
freely out to the dead or his survivors, the aspect of 
mourning brings overstrain, and the tear and the smile 
come shamefully close together. Pompous homage 
ceases, and with all but the few, worthily illustrious 
beyond their times, the torch dies out and mortals, great 
or humble, slumber alike forgotten. The casual 
rambler of a later age takes somewhat of a sardonic 
delight in thinking how little the graven titles or trib- 
utes to the departed one can give passports to dis- 
tinction in another world. But where these old tomb- 
stones make most a kindred mourner of casual pos- 
terity is in the family group of graves whose inscrip- 
tions reveal the universal hope that husband, wife and 
little ones, once united, shall yet unite again. From 
such a point of view, let us bless forever the old de- 
parted of our pioneer age. Though the individual 
record of such lives may have perished from human 



BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS 47 

annals, we surely feel that they have left to the future 
generations a conjugal and parental example worthy 
the tenderest commemoration. For these men and 
women were the breeders and fosterers of a great 
people ; they sowed in our soil the seed that germinated 
into the grandest democratic experiment the world has 
yet witnessed. Their life companionship was that of 
rugged toil, of noble endeavor to lead pious lives and 
bring up an offspring in that fear of God which the 
Bible tells us is the beginning of wisdom and under- 
standing. Their households were wholesome; they 
lived among neighbors without reproach; they died — 

"On resurrection's morn to rise. 
And meet the Lord with sweet surprise." 



V 

HOUSES AND HOMES 

THE land tenure of these colonies, varying as it 
did under one charter settlement or another, 
came to affect powerfully the political char- 
acter of their respective peoples. In one respect, this 
tenure differed greatly from that in Great Britain : the 
iron impress of the feudal system was wanting. In- 
stead of being vassals and feudatories, theoretically, 
under some lord paramount, men owned their land in 
fee, unincumbered by those onerous tributes which the 
military despotism of the middle ages had exacted in 
Europe. Our land tenure on this North Atlantic slope 
was essentially modern, and the freedom and facility 
of acquiring a full title in the individual favored here 
the condition of freehold farmer rather than of a mere 
tenant, lessee or occupier and tiller of acres owned by 
a landlord. 

In Europe at that day the whole fabric of rank and 
privilege rested upon the unequal distribution of land. 
As to these thirteen colonies, the British Crown had 
given out patents originally to chartered companies, 
to lord proprietors, to royal favorites ; not unfrequently 
conveying the same lands twice or thrice over, so that 
titles were conflicting. The primitive grantees in New 
England, however, laid out their lands as wise founders 
of a commonwealth. In Plymouth, in Massachusetts 



HOUSES AND HOMES 49 

Bay, and in the later settlements planned through such 
precious example, real estate was run into contiguous 
tracts ten miles square, called townships, and then 
granted by the governing authority to forty or fifty 
proprietors jointly, their heirs and assigns forever, with 
obligation to build a church and schoolhouse. A 
settler, unless selling out, would subdivide to his chil- 
dren, and those in turn to theirs; the soil became 
minutely partitioned for cultivation and improvement, 
and republics flourished on a basis of equal rights. 
"Every one in the New England colonies is a free- 
holder," observed a London press writer in 1767, "and 
enjoys more liberty than any other people in Europe 
and America." 

But in the middle and southern colonies less of a 
township system existed, and great inequalities pre- 
vailed by comparison. Thus, in New York, the Crown 
had made to individuals enormous grants of twenty 
miles square^ and much the same held true in New 
Jersey. Patroons, lords of the manor, built their 
castles on the Hudson like another Rhine ; and one of 
these. Van Rensselaer, used to bring a New York 
sheriff with his armed posse to drive off the intruders 
on his domain. Penns3dvania was one grand domain 
bestowed by Charles II. upon William Penn; and here 
millions of acres paid a quit-rent to the family pro- 
prietor. Maryland's Lord Baltimore, too, had enjoyed 
the princely benefaction of a Stuart as proprietor of 
the colony. In Virginia and the remaining British 
provinces to the southward a plantation system spread 
over extensive tracts of fertile land for the raising of 
great staples for export. Yet in the general competi- 
tion to induce a settlement, local faults of tenure were 
somewhat modified in these colonies, and all things 



50 AMERICANS OF 1776 

tended, among English-speaking freemen at least, to 
political equality. 

Our population still clung to the Atlantic coast and 
its tributary rivers ; nor were the backwoods (with wild 
beasts and Indians) far remote as yet, though gradu- 
ally receding into the interior. Bears in 1766 infested 
Hartford considerably, causing great havoc among 
sheep and swine; and the inhabitants of the town that 
year pursued and shot a large one and roasted it whole. 
A "tiger or panther" had been reported at Fishkill, 
New York, the year before. Wolves, too, imperilled 
various frontier towns of New England and Northern 
New York and destroyed sheep by the hundreds. "In- 
formers of deer" were among the town officers still 
annually elected in Boston and its vicinity. Bears, as 
late as 1750, or even later, were reported shot in the 
suburbs of Philadelphia. 

Farms were frequently managed on the halves, the 
owner thus getting readily his part profit on the 
produce in lieu of a rental. Out in the wilderness the 
new settler swung his axe, that prime weapon of 
progress, more potent even than the rifle. Felling trees 
was the first pioneer occupation, that the rich new soil 
might open its bosom to the sun and air and fructify 
abundantly. Too much wood was cut, however, and 
cut ruthlessly; and we are now only just beginning to 
learn that forests should be preserved and cultivated 
as a permanent investment, by careful choice and selec- 
tion for harvest, leaving a new growth to come up. 
For fuel, for building, too, trees were useful enough to 
the neighboring proprietor; but where one could not 
transport far to find a market for his lumber, he would 
hack and destroy without discrimination, so as to make 
room for raising quickly his crop of Indian corn. Yet 



HOUSES AND HOMES 51 

the woods of our American wilderness were vast in 
those days, and spoliation did as yet little, compara- 
tively, of visible damage/ 



Homes and habitations in every age and country 
typify the civilized condition of their local dwellers. 
At the date we are considering, America had advanced 
to the stage of a fixed and permanent body of inhabi- 
tants, many of whom were affluent and of high social 
influence ; while most possessed at least the means of an 
honest livelihood. Public protection against Indian 
assaults was no longer needful in our older towns and 
settlements; and the stockades of heavy logs, once the 
common resort of inhabitants in time of danger, had 
disappeared. 

English men and women wanted English homes, just 
as the Dutch, our first settlers of New York, conformed 
to the quaint patterns of Holland — all alike seeking 
reminders of their old country. By the latter half of 
the eighteenth century, then, and before our Revolu- 
tion, were fine mansion-houses solidly and well built 
of wood, brick or stone, in which abode persons of 
quality, many of them staunch Tories and Loyalists. 
The Craigie house in Cambridge, Washington's head- 
quarters, and later the peaceful abode of our poet, Long- 
fellow; the Hancock house in Boston, which some of 
us still remember ; the brick Chase mansion, and others 
of a like pattern in old Annapolis ; Mount Vernon and 

^Chastellux, in 1780, deplored this wholesale forest destruction; 
pioneers, he thought, should disperse their settlements more, so 
as not simply to clear the land, but to clear while keeping intact 
the woods as a reservoir to preserve the earth's moisture. 
While visiting Monticello, he saw distant forest fires, which 
ravaged until the next heavy rain. 



52 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Monticello in Virginia — these may suffice for example 
among the many fine specimens of Enghsh colonial 
homes in one province or another. There was a simple 
dignity in such abodes, heightened by the ample acreage 
they occupied. For a certain aspect of court life gave 
a glory to the social set that was wont to gather in the 
capital towns of these provinces about the royal gov- 
ernor; and there did the pride of the wealthy find a 
British expression, as also in the maintenance of fine 
country seats, with spacious grounds, fit domiciles for 
an aspiring gentry. 

Yet for generous visiting and merrymaking, these 
colonial mansions, with some notable exceptions, were 
less roomy and spacious in their internal arrangement 
than we are apt to imagine, especially when we con- 
sider the immense family of one's own progeny that 
might be reared and brought up under a single roof, 
to return with their own offspring for the holidays 
after being once scattered. Mount Vernon, first among 
our historic mansions, was, after all, of but moderate 
size and commodiousness in the Revolutionary times, 
except for its detached kitchen and servants' quarters; 
most of the housekeeping being carried on outside the 
main building. And coming down to the less imposing 
homes of ancestors less affluent, but more prolific, one 
stands in tranquil Lexington at the famous house 
whence Hancock and Samuel Adams emerged in flight 
near the dawn of that memorable April morning, 
and marvels that four small walls should have en- 
compassed, besides these illustrious guests, the goodly 
family of a country parson, grown folks, children and 
servants. 

Surely, in those days, and among such Americans 
as claimed but a modest competence, young and old 



HOUSES AND HOMES 53 

must have doubled up in the halls and chambers at 
night, and rafters rung by day with merriment and 
noise on an anniversary occasion. For, after all, the 
dwelling-houses of our colonial age rarely exceeded 
two stories in height, with other chambers finished off 
in the roof; while often enough the final accommoda- 
tions stopped at the second story. A few of the more 
stately mansions, however, made a good three stories, 
exclusive of the roof, and occupied an ample area in 
square feet besides, with a garden curtilage. Before 
and after the Revolution some extravagant dwelling- 
house in town would be put up to bankrupt its pro- 
prietor, and neighbors dubbed it his "folly. "^ 

For building material, brick was already much used 
in the middle and southern colonies, being readily made 
there and well burned ; while in and about Philadelphia 
stone was a common and convenient substitute. New 
York by 1750 was well up in its building styles, as in 
everything else, Charleston, after a great fire in 1740, 
rebuilt in brick, with better taste than before; and in 
this palmetto region the Spanish concrete came also 
into use, composed of oyster shells, sand and water; 
and the soil serving well for brick, lime of the oyster- 
shell was used for mortar. New England, however, 
clung long to its lumber materials ; and though a choice 
mansion of stone or imported brick might be visible 
there thus early, dwelling-houses were commonly of 
wood, even in the largest towns. Boston was highly 
inflammable, and as late as 1795 travellers marvelled 
at its many wooden buildings, which stood endwise 
toward the street. These wooden houses went largely 

'See mention of one such in Baltimore, in 1754, whose owner 
presently turned it over to the town as a small-pox hospital, 
evidently meaning never to live in it again. 



54 AMERICANS OF 1776 

impainted through the distressful days of war, and 
took on a dingy aspect. 

American houses were in those days advertised for 
sale or rent with two, three and sometimes four rooms 
on a floor; with a pump and well, outhouses or a wood- 
shed, and a back yard, sometimes paved. A genteel 
house had its cellar, too ; but basement or cellar kitchens 
scarcely yet existed. It was quite common to carry on 
one's trade or manual pursuit in his own dwelling. 
Both sexes grew apt, moreover, in the variety of de- 
mands made where skilled labor was not to be readily 
had and economy was needful. Men built and repaired 
their own houses ; the women folk kept those houses in 
order inside, and made up clothing for young and old. 
Almost every small householder could turn his hand to 
painting, carpentry and petty repairs ; and such was the 
universal reliance placed upon the mutual disposition 
to mutual help that neighbors would turn out and join 
in a house or barn raising whenever called upon, 
asking only the treat of a broached cask of cider or a 
gallon of rum. 

Grand parks and grounds artistically laid out with 
flower beds were not to be expected among so plain 
and primitive a people. Nature made her own adorn- 
ment. Even the rich planter lived in a sort of easy 
indolence upon his broad acres, among rude laborers 
who had no tasteful ideas to impart; and our sons of 
Adam elsewhere were mostly intent upon those prod- 
ucts of the soil that yield an essential livelihood. 
Boston's common, unique in picturesqueness, was some- 
thing of a public pleasure-ground, and so was the 
battery in New York; but Philadelphia, our chief 
metropolis, had not a single promenade or enclosure to 
give comfort and recreation to its citizens. In many a 



HOUSES AND HOMES 55 

little town the village green or common served for 
holiday sport or parade; yet, after all, one found the 
chief solace of toil, as well as the dainties of life, in 
his own private orchard or garden. People raised for 
the table their own plums, peaches, pears, apricots, 
apples, cherries and currants ; and in the kitchen garden 
their own potatoes, corn, beans and asparagus ; flowers 
they cultivated to some extent besides. 



The church or meeting-house shared usually with 
court-house or town-house the honor of safeguarding 
the inhabitants. Williamsburg, of old Virginia, had its 
provincial capitol of two stories at one end of the main 
street; while the other end was occupied by William 
and Mary College. No native city or town of this age 
was so cosmopolitan that a stray horse, or a cow with 
a bell about her neck, might not be seen wandering on 
the highway, to say nothing of domestic goats or swine, 
less comely, that long did scavenger work in streets 
with a surface drainage. Philadelphia's paving pro- 
gressed in 1770 under an act of the Pennsylvania 
assembly which required preference to be given to such 
streets as were most used by country people when 
bringing their produce to market. Salutary legislation 
of about this same date sent the human scavenger upon 
his rounds and checked a former custom of private 
pollutions on the highway ; at the same time regulating 
business signs and cellar steps, that they should not en- 
croach upon the sidewalk. 

Boston led all the colonial towns of this era 
in public cleanliness; and its paving had since 171 5 
received much attention from the selectmen. Here 
economical usage was at first to pave only a strip in 



56 AMERICANS OF 1776 

the middle of the street, and in fact there was no side- 
walk in the town until after the Revolution. Pebbles 
or cobblestones — smooth, round stones from the 
beach — long composed the only pavement, and except 
when carts and carriages compelled them aside the 
good people walked in the middle of the street. The 
thoroughfares of Charleston, South Carolina, though 
narrow, were less crooked than those of Boston, which 
originated largely in trodden paths and cattle trails; 
while those of New York, less precise by ruler and 
compass than in the Quaker City (planned by Penn 
himself), gave a spontaneous and pleasing effect of 
breadth and variety. By 1750, New York's streets 
were well laid out and paved in the more needful parts ; 
and shade trees along the front yielded a grateful screen 
from the summer's hot sunshine. With only about a 
quarter mile of cartage anywhere, that city was paved 
with round pebbles, and showed a Dutch neatness. But 
Philadelphia seems to have improved quite slowly ; and 
with its rectangular streets, dusty and muddy by turns, 
as weather varied, people gave it the punning sobriquet 
of "Filthy-dirty." A man on horseback, as the tale 
went, having got mired in one of the slreets, was 
thrown from his horse and broke his leg; whereupon 
arose a public agitation, and pavements were com- 
pelled. 

Increasing dangers by night, with an increasing pop- 
ulation, had brought about street lighting and a night 
watch in our leading centres. Good citizens themselves 
maintained such luxuries at first, while the frugal 
authorities held back from levying a tax; or perhaps 
the unpaid duties of watchman and constable were im- 
posed upon fellow-citizens chosen to the place, who 
were fined if they failed to serve. Rural towns to this 



HOUSES AND HOMES 57 

day are reluctant to assume such public burdens. It 
was general complaint in 1749 that Philadelphia had 
barely six night watchmen to a population of 15,000, 
and that even these went their route in company. No 
watchman's rattles were yet known, but watchmen 
would cry the time of night and the state of the weather 
as they went their rounds — a practice derived from 
old England, it would seem, like the sentinel's cry of 
"all's well." At night from the earliest times the cur- 
few or nine o'clock bell rang out in New England 
towns ; and Boston selectmen issued strict orders to the 
inhabitants against walking the streets after ten o'clock 
or showing lights later in their houses. If there ap- 
peared to be dancing or singing later than that hour, 
the watchman would rap on the door and bid the 
offenders cease or have their names reported. Phila- 
delphia's regulations were also strict, and the mayor 
issued his formal instructions to the watchmen some- 
what after Dogberry's famous formula. Street bon- 
fires or beacons became the usual night signal in 
colonial towns among patriots opposed to the Crown; 
while they whose business or pleasure took them from 
home after dark must long have carried their own 
lanterns.^ 

'New York City had in its enterprise erected lamps and lamp- 
posts at the public cost before the Revolution; so that, as we 
read, the plan earlier in vogue of hanging lanterns from private 
windows was definitely abandoned. In 1773 the Massachusetts 
general court passed an act for regulating lamp-lighting in 
Boston at the public cost, and imposing penalties for the mis- 
chievous offence of breaking street-lamps and emptying the oil. 
It seems, however, that the selectmen took no action until nearly 
twenty years later for public lighting. Philadelphia levied its 
lamp and watch tax in 1772 (if not earlier), discounting the 
rates to such householders as kept their private pumps in good 
repair. 



58 AMERICANS OF 1776 

No general water-works on an ample scale were 
found in America until after the Revolution. Pump 
or well water was good enough for the colonists; and 
the old well-sweep with its oaken bucket was a familiar 
adjunct of the primitive home, to which poetry has 
done justice. But horses fell sometimes into the con- 
cealed or covered wells on private premises; while 
human beings were killed or badly maimed in like 
manner where owners had failed to keep up proper 
safeguards. Every New England town had its town 
pump, upon which public notices and proclamations 
were affixed. Philadelphia kept many pumps in its 
public streets. Rain cisterns were also erected. Wells 
had succeeded the surface springs as local populations 
grew, and since they had often to be sunk to great depth, 
and were impregnated besides with impure matter, the 
demand grew for a pure and abundant supply of water 
for whole communities. 

Fuel for our colonial homes was usually of wood, cut 
in some neighboring forest and brought by the winter 
sled to market. In fact, winter's chief occupation in the 
country consisted in providing the new year's supply, 
to take its proper turn at seasoning in the woodpile. 
Measurers and scalers of wood were among the local 
officers of our provinces ; and provincial laws regulated 
the length or quality of all wood and charcoal exposed 
for sale. Virginia soft coal was used to some extent; 
and in 1774 we see pit-coal offered for sale by private 
owners on the James River, for household or black- 
smith use, ready for delivery on their premises at 
12 pence a bushel. Anthracite was unknown. New- 
castle coal was imported and sold in our chief centres 
of population. Places of public meeting were hardly 
warmed in winter, save by the fervid sermons or dis- 



II 



HOUSES AND HOMES 59 

cussions. About the middle of the eighteenth century 
appeared the cannon stove — so called from its shape. 
Franklin's new "fireplace" stove, invented in 1742, 
while economizing heat, preserved the cheerfulness of 
an open fire. 

In colonial times, keeping one's coach was at the 
North no essential of respectability; and a one-horse 
chaise or calash, springless, worth perhaps fifty dol- 
lars, and harnessed to a steady family beast, was style 
enough for any one. Virginians, to be sure, and their 
neighbors took pride in thoroughbred and well- 
groomed steeds; such gentry enjoyed horseback 
riding, fine coaches with livery and the jockey races; 
but the sleek Pennsylvanian ambled along with an easy 
pacer and a two-wheeled carriage, disdaining such 
follies. The householder had his own stable; others, 
in or near town, placed their beasts with the tavern 
keeper. Farmers, of course, kept their cattle. Horses 
that did hard labor on the farm or in the owner's 
routine business were put into their best harness and 
shafts for an occasional jaunt, or on the Lord's day 
to take the family to meeting. Ladies made no pre- 
tence in this age to athletics; and yet, besides the 
routine work of farm or household, that must have 
called out strong muscular exertion, they took long 
walks for shopping and social visiting ; and if they went 
out for pleasure and frolic at night, they made nothing 
of strolling for miles with their swains, even though 
clad in fine attire. To ride about in town was thought 
an affectation, nor were livery stables for hire as yet 
an institution. Hacks were hardly heard of; and when 
first set up, in fact, their patronage did not pay ex- 
penses. 



VI 

THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 

DISTRESSING accidents, such as we find 
chronicled in the newspapers of our colonial 
era, bring home vividly to posterity the 
dangerous personal exposures of that period. How 
many serious casualties came from trying to do every- 
thing for one's own self in this rude state of experi- 
ence, without expert knowledge or the fair subdivision 
of industries ! Severe sickness or injury was followed 
more likely by death than nowadays, because less skil- 
fully treated or guarded against. Children, rambling 
out of doors, and grown persons besides, would pick 
and eat strange berries, roots and vegetables that 
turned out poisonous ; and in vain did newspapers warn 
against toadstools resembling mushrooms, against 
hemlock, ivy and the like, strange growths of luxuriant 
nature. 

Clumsiness at work by the injured or injurer did 
much mortal mischief. A man dropped from his ladder 
or scaffolding while repairing a house, or fell into the 
well he was digging, or got knocked under the frame 
of the building he was helping to raise, or was scalded 
to death by an overturned kettle of boiling water, pot- 
ash or maple sap. One poor fellow was crushed under 
the wheel of a cart that he or some one else was driv- 
ing; another was killed by the fall of a tree while 
awkwardly chopping it down. Not seldom, we may 



THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 6i 

surmise, the victim was under the influence of liquor ; 
for tippHng at this date was a vice quite prevalent 
among Americans. But many an accident was doubt- 
less due to bodily wrenching or straining, while over- 
taxing one's strength in trying to lift, unload or do 
a hundred other things for one's self, which in these 
days would devolve rather upon men specially skilled 
or seasoned to such labor. We read of a father and 
three sons who were killed, one after another, while 
descending, without first making a test, into a pit of 
noxious vapor. One man was asphyxiated by setting 
a pot of burning charcoal in his bedchamber at night 
and then shutting the windows to keep out the cold; 
another was maimed fatally while prying up a rock; 
a third was killed by his uplifted axe flying from the 
handle; a fourth tumbled from the roof and broke his 
neck while trying to put out a fire which had caught 
from his kitchen chimney. Pioneer life brings its 
peculiar casualties, and many accidents of this age were 
due, undoubtedly, to carrying on one's occupation at 
home in the presence of his famfly. So, once more, 
with a large wood fire left on the ample hearth, a help- 
less old grandmother or young child would be burned 
to death in its embers while left unwatched. 

People were careless, moreover, in the use of powder 
and firearms when our Revolutionary era began, as 
the newspapers show us. Thus in celebrating the repeal 
of the Stamp Act, injuries were reported in various 
towns where the charge had been carelessly rammed 
into the cannon. At Hartford the legislature voted 
joyfully to the townsfolk two barrels of powder for 
volleys in honor of the repeal. This powder was kept 
in the schoolhouse, and the militiamen, when filling 
their horns with it, left some spilled on the floor. The 



62 AMERICANS OF 1776 

school children playing sportively with the black grains, 
one boy set them on fire, whereupon, the train leading 
to a powder barrel, the latter exploded with tremen- 
dous concussion. The schoolhouse was blown up, and 
wholesale slaughter of the innocents rounded the 
catastrophe. Careless lads in Boston, carelessly looked 
after, met a similar fate a few years later while amus- 
ing themselves with another stray barrel of this ex- 
plosive, left loosely about. There were gunpowder 
accidents, besides, where grown people used powder 
from a horn to start a household fire on the hearth. 
Writers in the press of 1770 complained that boys got 
hold of gunpowder and firearms, and then fired loaded 
pistols out of mischief at a passing carriage, perilling 
the lives of wayfarers and frightening their horses. 
A stringent police inspection must here have been 
wanting. 



The individual nature of these accidents, in the main, 
forces a comparison with our own more polished and 
populous age. Seldom did a fatality of this era in- 
volve a general holocaust of lives, as happens so often 
in these later days of wholesale risk by tramp or travel. 
The canoe or little skiff was overset in summer, the 
sleigh broke through the thin ice in winter, yet only 
two or three were drowned. From houses and work- 
shops as then built or occupied there was a tolerably 
easy escape. Death came, then, or some shocking in- 
jury, chiefly as an individual infliction, and strongly 
indeed must the heart of the community have responded 
to sorrow and suffering. For in these primitive days 
all were compassionate toward social equals, at least, 
who were bereaved ; and to each large household came 



THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 63 

in turn the chastening experience of human sorrow. 
Even in war, they who fought for liberty were fairly 
identified, far beyond the present conception of our 
later age; high or low, in each and every community, 
the brave were mourned and memorized in their deeds. 

In men's mouths and through press or preacher the 
moral of the sudden death found expression. "Ye 
gay and careless on his fate attend," was a frequent 
comment in the newspapers; nor had the "marvellous 
dispensations of Providence" passed out of New Eng- 
land study since the days of old Winthrop's Journal. 
And truly God's hand was recognized in many a 
strange phenomenon of the times — in earthquakes, 
lightning, storms, and other commotions of nature, 
which were faithfully reported, and sometimes a little 
credulously. There were news of hurricanes from. 
"His Majesty's Caribbean Islands;" and precocious 
Alexander Hamilton owed his first prodigious lift in 
life by vividly describing, while a youth, one of those 
calamities for a local paper. At Amesbury and Salis- 
bury, in Massachusetts, a terrible tornado in 1773 
wrecked all houses far and near, while sparing human 
life. In 1777 earthquakes rumbled at historic Con- 
cord and the neighboring towns, as credible witnesses 
solemnly deponed. Balls of fire, in these eventful 
years — comets, too, and meteors, were studied by col- 
lege men in various provinces. Hailstones in Vir- 
ginia, as big as a pint bowl, whirlwinds and the like, 
were reported from the South, till our printer him- 
self betrayed scepticism over his information. 

Thunder and lightning in particular seem to have 
been unsparingly destructive in our summer storms, 
and the variety of accidents therefrom was wonderful. 
Persons struck by the thunderbolt were senseless for 



64 AMERICANS OF 1776 

hours, if left alive ; horses, sheep and oxen perished in 
large numbers ; many a tree was riven sharply asunder. 
Fifteen sheep under a tree lost their lives together; 
a vessel building on the stocks was wholly ruined. In 
or near Philadelphia, in 1772, a house was struck by 
lightning one day while the whole family were at 
table; some were killed or stunned, others miracu- 
lously escaped, while pewter plates, from which they 
were eating dinner, had the whole rim melted. Five 
years later, at Hartford, on a June Sunday, a violent 
downpour of rain began just as Divine service was 
over, and, with a sharp detonation like a cannon-shot, 
lightning struck the steeple of the meeting-house, shat- 
tering the top and carrying away weathercock, spindle 
and large timbers. Then the electricity glided, snake- 
like, under the roof and prostrated some of the assem- 
bly, killing a woman. In terror, the congregation 
sought to escape, but the shower hindered them; and 
returning to their seats and singing psalms together 
they grew calm, and the storm passed on without fur- 
ther injury. 

Accidents like these were reported all over America 
from year to year by the local press. A Baltimore 
sheriff perished in 1767 by lightning. James Otis, the 
eloquent seer of revolution, was killed, as posterity 
knows, by a thunderbolt. Many a strange fantastic 
freak was played by the electric fluid in one rural com- 
munity or another. Citizens of a scientific turn stud- 
ied, therefore, how to lessen the danger by appliances 
which might treat lightning as a natural agent, rather 
than the visible symbol of God's wrath. Hence, by 
1770, Franklin's lightning rods came somewhat into 
use. Prejudice, however, against lightning rods was 
very great, and many insisted that it was better to 



THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 65 

trust all to the Divine Will than forefend danger with 
such impious contrivances. It was to meet a common 
New England superstition that Professor John Win- 
throp, of Cambridge, a man of much wisdom, who was 
the first recipient of an LL.D. from Harvard, com- 
mended the new invention, in 1770, in an open letter 
to the press, arguing that the religious scruples which 
opposed its introduction were founded in false phi- 
losophy and a misapprenhension of those natural laws 
by which God guides the universe. 

The old Puritan idea, that God shapes directly all the 
details of human life for purposes foreordained toward 
each individual soul, truly conflicted with the more 
rational theory of man's responsible existence on this 
earth and his free choice among the operations of 
nature's own immutable laws. It failed to apprehend 
a Divine Will which respects high human endeavor. 
Hence science must have swung in that century to an 
opposite side, leaving religion and irreligion in strong 
antagonism. When the pendulum ceases to react vio- 
lently to and fro, the real truth as to man's final destiny 
may reveal itself at equilibrium. 



Great suffering must have been caused in this era 
by the extremes of heat and cold. The temperature of 
America differed, perhaps, not greatly from what pos- 
terity has found it, and weather exceptionally severe 
may still set in. But the conveniences for resisting 
storm and stress were far less then than now ; though 
greater, doubtless, than in the previous century, when 
the winter sufferings of our first New England settlers 
must have been terrible indeed. Roads scarcely trav- 
elled, with dwellers far apart ; dense woods and frozen 



66 AMERICANS OF 1776 

sheets of water; wooden houses built meanly for the 
most part, and with chinks and crannies through which 
the winter wnnds might whistle hoarsely; no furnaces, 
no large portable stoves or steam radiators to diffuse 
and equalize warmth ; wood fires usually in place of 
coal, throwing out a fitful and variable heat ; imperfect 
means at hand for alleviating sickness and suffering; 
no flight for the invalid to a warmer climate, no lux- 
uries, — such were the usual conditions of colonial life 
for meeting each winter's hardships. Navigation in 
our Northern ports was hindered much by the win- 
ter's ice; small sailing vessels in boisterous weather 
were tossed furiously about or driven ashore in 
disaster; great spring floods and high tides, with 
wind, rain or snow alternate, submerged the piers and 
streets adjacent in our seaport towns, deluged the cel- 
lars, broke up wharves, carried off piles of lumber 
awaiting export at the water's edge, and damaged such 
little craft as might be moored at anchor in the vicinity. 
Snowstorms which lasted three days in midwinter 
would pile the drifting snow six or seven feet high 
in places, thus blocking all travel, preventing the hardy 
post-riders from making their customary trips, and ex- 
cluding news for a whole week from the outer world. 
Then two months later would come great freshets 
with the first spring thaw, carrying away bridges, im- 
peding the little ferries, and once more detaining trav- 
ellers and the mails. We read of a severe snowstorm, 
March, 1761, in Philadelphia, which prevented a 
quorum of the Pennsylvania assembly from conven- 
ing; and a merchants' petition, that same year, prayed 
the authorities to have piers erected in the Delaware, 
so as to fend vessels from the floating ice. Another 
intensely cold winter, bringing severe snowstorms, was 



THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 67 

that of 1765-66. Boston boys skated on the frozen 
Charles, and sleighs were driven over that river from 
Cambridge; some fifteen vessels could be counted, 
locked fast in Boston harbor by the ice, over whose 
polished surface people walked for miles to visit the 
castle and various islands. The gales and occasional 
snowfalls of that winter were terrible to endure; men 
froze to death while driving, exposed to the keen 
air; snowshoes were worn out of doors; many chim- 
neys blew down. Hairbreadth escapes were an- 
nounced, moreover, in course of the voyage between 
Providence and New York, or where men who went 
gunning after water-fowl got their boats entangled in 
the ice about Long Island. It was shown by careful 
experiment in a closed house in New York City, that, 
in rooms where there was no fire, a glass of wine 
froze to the bottom in fourteen minutes, and water in 
three seconds. 



Disastrous fires enhanced the calamity of exposure 
to severe winter weather like this. Sparks and flame 
belching from the deep-throated chimneys upon 
a wooden roof caused many a conflagration. Befouled 
chimneys were a frequent cause of fire; so was care- 
lessness with a basket of chips ; or the foolish custom of 
keeping hot ashes in wooden barrels and boxes. Other 
household fires were due to the pursuit of industries 
upon the family premises, which nowadays would be 
conducted elsewhere — as where one carried on at home 
a bakeshop or brewery, tried out tallow, or repaired 
furniture. Burning brush was another reported cause 
of such a calamity ; or going down cellar with a lighted 
candle to draw rum or cider for supper. 



68 AMERICANS OF 1776 

When weather was icy cold, and the wind blowing 
a gale, a spreading fire by night was fearful to delicate 
children and the elderly sick and feeble, who had to 
be brought out of bed and removed in the cold to such 
shelter as might offer. Incendiary fires seem seldom to 
have occurred, however. Neighbors turned out 
strongly to help on all occasions of calamity, and at 
church even, when the shouts of "fire!" from outside 
were heard, with the noise of engines in the street, the 
males of a congregation would hasten out of doors, 
losing the sequence of the sermon. A simple candor 
was shown by the press in relating the indiscretion, if 
any, which had caused the disaster; as in an Andover 
fire of 1770, which burned to the ground an old house 
next the meeting-house, its three lonely and aged in- 
mates perishing in the flames; though providentially, 
as the reporter put it, the church escaped unharmed, 
owing to the direction of the wind. Two old maiden 
sisters, it seems, were in the habit of smoking their 
pipes after they got into bed, whence, probably, the 
disaster. "Therefore," adds the chronicler, "it may 
not be amiss to caution people against such a prac- 
tice." 

Townspeople in those days kept their own fire- 
buckets, made of heavy leather and marked with the 
owner's initials or family crest; and the local news- 
paper, after some important fire, would advertise for 
missing buckets. When an alarm was given, by cries 
or bell-ringing, each householder rushed with his 
bucket toward the scene of danger, and a double line 
was formed to the nearest river, pond, or tide-water 
dock, as the case might be, whence buckets brimming 
with water passed from hand to hand, up one line, and 
then dry again down the other, to be refilled or passed 



THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 69 

as before. Fire engines of a simple sort had come into 
use in our chief centres; most were imported before 
1765; but after that date, the home-made engines of 
Boston or Philadelphia pattern were thought even bet- 
ter than those from London. Our fire engines as yet 
worked simply with a pump and nozzle ; hose carriages 
came much later, while steam fire engines belong to 
the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1738 Frank- 
lin formed at Philadelphia the first of volunteer fire 
companies in America, and each member at his own 
cost kept a certain number of leather buckets, with 
strong bags and baskets besides for packing and res- 
cuing goods from the flames. This example spread to 
other towns and provinces; and social clubs are still 
to be found for good fellowship which originated as a 
local fire company in the eighteenth century. 

Fire insurance had made some progress in these col- 
onies before the Revolution, and a few companies, on 
the mutual plan, took risks in Boston and Philadel- 
phia. Yet there was prejudice against such schemes; 
and we see the correspondent of a New York paper, 
as late as 1770, expressing his surprise that no such 
enterprise had yet been started in that city. "Contri- 
butionship," as it was called, against losses from fire, 
was an idea for another and later generation to appre- 
ciate at its true worth. Men took their own risks 
largely of losses by fire, as in being struck by lightning. 
All such ordinances were of God, as they expressed it ; 
and the impoverished citizen whose building and con- 
tents yielded to the furious flames, had usually to begin 
life over again, stripped of his hoarded possessions. 
That situation of life, so unfamiliar to our later age, 
called specially for sympathy and alleviation from 
neighbors. Marine risks and marine insurance became 



70 AMERICANS OF 1776 

a business in the modern world sooner than fire in- 
surance, just as fire risks and fire insurance preceded 
insurance on Hves.^ 



Things were lost or stolen in those days, as in ours, 
and the loss was advertised in the paper. That trem- 
ulous signer of the Declaration, Stephen Hopkins, of 
Rhode Island, while returning with fellow-delegates 
from Congress, in 1776, lost a large bundle of men's 
and women's clothes, made up in a coarse linen wrap- 
per. He had sent them specially by a wagon from 
Philadelphia to Providence; "the wagon arrived at 
Providence," he naively announces, "but the cloathes 
did not." Another good citizen of New England lost, 
in 1 769, a bag, whose contents he itemized as one half- 
worn beaver hat, a gray cloth jacket, a pair of country- 
made speckled stockings, one ruffled shirt, one plain 
ditto, and a package of valuable papers. He names in 
his card a friend, whom he authorizes to receive the 
bag if found, and supposes he lost it in some dram- 
shop or tavern while in company with soldiers. The 
simple candor of such newspaper statements is some- 
times amusing ; yet cunning was shown by the loser, as 
nowadays, when appealing to the unknown dispos- 
sessor. Reward we see offered thus early for restitu- 
tion, "and no questions asked." In a Boston paper, 
one announced his loss of a new beaver hat, which was 
taken out of a room in Massachusetts Hall, at Cam- 

^Drake's "Landmarks" says that the first fire insurance com- 
pany in Boston dated from 1724; but this seems to have been 
a Boston agency of the London "Sun" Insurance Co. Encycl. 
Brit, gives the Philadelphia company of 1752 as the earliest 
started in America, Benjamin Franklin being one of its earliest 
directors. 



THE CASUALTIES OF LIFE 71 

bridge, on Commencement Day, an old one being left 
in its stead; and the loser politely surmises that the 
exchange was made by mistake, though adding that 
his own name was pasted inside of the missing castor. 
Another loser, less suave, offered a reward as for arti- 
cles doubtless stolen from his house, and tried another 
tack, — he warns the thieves, whoever they may be, that 
if they escape condign punishment in this world, they 
will meet it in the next, where they will repent all too 
late that they had foolishly lost their souls in trying 
to gain the goods of this world wrongfully. 



In English court process of the earliest times and 
in all formal documents of our common lawjlhe recital 
of pursuit in station after each patronymic has been so 
customary as fairly to suggest the origin of various 
surnames. Thus, probate notices styled the deceased 
as knight or gentleman, merchant, shipwright, clerk, 
victualler, smith, brazier, chocolate grinder, and so on. 
Such was the custom strongly prevalent here and 
abroad in colonial times. In the colonial press, more- 
over, one saw the formal notice of executor or admin- 
istrator followed quite often by a line or two of adver- 
tising on his own personal account; for he used the 
opportunity to do a stroke of business both for the dead 
one's assets and his own. A husband, for instance, 
administering on his deceased wife's estate, announces 
that he has for sale choice Narragansett cheese and 
Dorchester ale, with other English commodities, cheap 
for cash. A distiller's widow adds to her probate 
notice as executrix, that she still carries on the business 
and customers may send for their rum as before. The 
relict of a baker or a sugar boiler makes corresponding 



72 AMERICANS OF 1776 

announcement; and quite commonly the surviving 
spouse, or widow and children together, advertise a 
successor to the decedent's business, hoping for the 
continued patronage of the public. So, again, a family- 
friend, who settled his neighbor's estate, might be seen 
putting in a good word for himself in connection with 
the probate advertisement; as where an executor pub- 
lished that he kept good stabling for horses, and that 
travellers might depend at any time upon his faithful 
care. Articles to be sold for an estate — such as a horse 
and shay, for instance — were added, too, to these 
printed orders of the court ; or a request was specially 
appended that persons who had articles belonging to 
the estate of the departed would return them forth- 
with. There seems to have been much neighborly bor- 
rowing in those days, as well as a reckoning of small 
things; for among specific articles thus publicly called 
for as missing from an estate, we find itemized not 
books alone, but a blue drab coat, or a pair of boots. 
One thinks in such connection of that conscientious 
nicety of the frugal and thrifty Scotch, proclaimed 
in their own immortal songs ; as where the loyal 
Jacobin tenders his extra bawbee to be ferried over 
to bonnie Prince Charlie; or boon companions who 
take together their last "good willie-waught" for 
"Auld Lang Syne," prearrange that each shall be at 
his own cost for the extra pint. 



VII 

THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 

IN no respect does the Revolutionary Age contrast 
more strongly with our own than in the prac- 
tical condition of the three public vocations, so 
termed, of our common law — those of postmaster, inn- 
keeper and common carrier. And the development of 
those several vocations has immensely affected our 
national character. 



As for the post-office, our Continental establishment 
at the date of the Revolution was directed by govern- 
ment, as in the mother country. The public post orig- 
inated centuries ago, in the sovereign transmission of 
public despatches alone. Thus was it with Persia, with 
the Roman Empire, with Europe under Charlemagne. 
In Great Britain, as in these colonies when first set- 
led, common people sent usually their letters by car- 
riers or by private conveyance ; but soon after the expul- 
sion of the Stuarts we see the Virginia Burgesses agi- 
tating a popular postal system, after the plan already 
adopted in the mother country, and organized by 
Parliament during the reign of Charles II. That sys- 
tem was fairly established in these colonies by 1740, 
so that post-riders exchanged the mails between Vir- 
ginia and Pennsylvania and eastward also. Hence- 
forth, and through our Revolutionary War, Philadel- 



74 AMERICANS OF 1776 

phia, America's chief city, became the great postal and 
distributing center of our thirteen colonies or states. 
Franklin, when Postmaster-General for the Crown by 
1753, took hold of the details deputed to him with 
characteristic energy and thrift, and after some private 
outlay for improvements, he made it profitable for 
government and its agents as never before. He set 
up milestones. He arranged that the northern mail 
from Philadelphia, which had gone to Boston but once 
a fortnight, should go once a week all the year round ; 
so that Boston and Philadelphia letters might be inter- 
changed in three weeks, instead of six, as previously. 
So, too, he changed the mail between Philadelphia and 
New York, from once a fortnight to twice a week, thus 
traversing the distance between those two important 
cities in three days. By the year our independence was 
proclaimed, even Bostonians might hear twice a week 
from Philadelphia and New York when travelling was 
good. On the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, our Con- 
gress took up the general post-office as an independent 
system; they established a chain of posts from Fal- 
mouth, New England, to Savannah, with riders for 
every twenty-five miles and advice-boats besides. 
Stagecoaches took gradually the place of the boy on 
horseback, or of post chaises or sulkies, for such trans- 
portation; and post-riders would sometimes set up a 
stagecoach for the common business of mails and pas- 
sengers. 

The conveyance of newspapers in this era was often 
the private perquisite of post-riders on their several 
routes, since newspapers and magazines did not go 
through the public mails at all. "Post-rider" some- 
times meant a sort of private carrier for mail matter, 
and many people preferred to send their important let- 



THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 75 

ters by private conveyance. During the Revolutionary 
War, messengers who proposed special trips of peril, 
to Quebec or Ticonderoga, for instance, would adver- 
tise to take private letters with them at a shilling or 
more each. 

At times the mail carrier journeyed in peril of his 
life; but his profession availed him well against casual 
disturbers of the peace. If assailed by highway rob- 
bers, he would say, "I am on His Majesty's service," 
and they let him ride on. Stress of weather and the 
bad condition of our roads would keep back the post, 
particularly in the winter and early spring. Not sel- 
dom the latest mails and newspapers from New York 
arrived in consequence a fortnight old in Boston or 
Baltimore, for ferries were frozen over with the win- 
ter's ice, and bridges swept away by the spring fresh- 
ets. Few large rivers were in those days bridged 
over at all, and travellers alternated between boat 
and wagon. Deep and drifting snow, when it came, 
cut off communication alike by post or the stage 
coach. 

Postal regulations, issued in 1765, for these colonies 
proclaimed each postmaster liable who embezzled the 
postage money paid him in advance ; postboys were 
to be punished who deserted a mail or bag of letters, 
or loitered on the way, or let any unofficial person ride 
on their horses or in their wagons. There were no 
stamps used. The letter postage at that time between 
London and any port among the British dominions in 
America was one shilling a single letter, or for letters 
weighing an ounce, four shillings; and hence, for pri- 
vate correspondence, the advantage of thin single 
sheets of good size, crossed and recrossed in writing, 
and folded and refolded, for sealing by wax or wafer. 



76 AMERICANS OF 1776 

The foreign mail arrived in our ports by heavy 
instalments far apart; and news from London two 
months behind were thought fresh enough in New 
York port. Tories argued, when our Whigs opposed 
the Stamp Act, that letter postage was already a Par- 
liamentary exaction in effect, which no one complained 
of here or thought of opposing; but to this came the 
fair reply that postage was paid for a special service of 
the government plainly to the advantage of the indi- 
vidual. 



The inn — in this early era commonly styled 
"tavern" or "coffee-house," or, still earlier, "an ordi- 
nary" — made very little pretence of being fit for men 
of fashion with their families to abide in regularly. 
Colonists, when they mated, wanted their own house- 
hold nests for themselves and their expected progeny, 
and however humble the family home, they secured 
it. Inns, in other words, lodged travellers, and the 
strictly transient only, except for single men ; and those 
great organisms of luxury and fashion, such as we 
know to-day for hotels, were then wholly wanting in 
America, to attract rich boarders and lodgers of both 
sexes seeking social ease for a season and escape from 
the worry of housekeeping. But in default of accom- 
modation elsewhere, the spacious public rooms of an 
inn came into demand for an occasional concert, ball 
or assembly, in the larger towns; sleigh-ride parties 
and excursionists stopped at its open door for a supper 
and an impromptu dance; while with main office, 
known to this very day by the suggestive style of "bar- 
room," and with commodious stables, our public house 
served as passenger station and booking headquarters 



THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 77 

for the various stages that came and went at fixed 
hours of the day. And here, furthermore, Americans 
would meet for jolHty or grave conference, with 
plenty of good liquor at command to stimulate their 
wits and appetites. Here, as in England, men smoked 
and drank, taking their ease together in the hours of 
recreation; here they discussed politics, drank toasts, 
quarrelled with one another, and even came to blows, 
since rules of decorum were not rigid. Addison and 
the Spectator familiarize us with the atmosphere of 
fun and good fellowship which long enlivened the 
London coffee-house; America, too, had her wags and 
story tellers, whose local renown mellowed in the 
genial warmth of a tavern's hospitality. In fine, even 
before Americans did much travelling, inns were the 
centre of life and affairs for the men folk; and judges 
and jurymen, church committees and politicians, idlers 
and business men, all resorted thither, to discuss and 
arrange affairs together. 

The inn or tavern had usually in those days some 
fanciful name, with pictured sign or emblem before the 
door to enhance the effect of publicity. There was the 
"hat and helmet;" the "ship on launch;" "the golden 
swan" or "golden eagle," with a gaudy gilding; "the 
green dragon;" "the orange tree;" "the bunch of 
grapes;" the "Turk's" or "Saracen's head;" the 
"crooked billet" or "fagot;" "the pewter plate;" the 
Indian "King" or "Queen." Atrocious painting might 
be seen crowded upon the sign-board of a tavern or 
shop to attract the public by its quaintness. Thus, 
Philadelphia had "the death of the fox;" "the man 
loaded with mischief" (who carried his wife on his 
back) ; and Sir Walter Raleigh in the act of smoking, 
while his servant threw water upon him, thinking him 



78 AMERICANS OF 1776 

on fire/ Boston had, in colonial days, an inn called 
"the British Coffee-House," which its proprietors 
changed into "the American Coffee-House," with the 
sign of a gilded eagle, after that town was redeemed 
from British siege. But in colonial times our inns, 
like those of the mother country, took often the name 
of some British peer, or an officer renowned in the 
army or navy; thus, there was the "Marquis of 
Granby," the "General Wolfe," the "Admiral Vernon" 
— this last, whose nickname was "Old Grog," being 
the same officer after whom Washington's elder 
brother named Mount Vernon. 

Philadelphia taverns were licensed early, but they 
did not stand in high favor, and sank readily into tip- 
pling and disorderly houses.^ Of inns In that city, the 
"Indian King" was the oldest and most reputable, and 
it was here that Franklin's junto used to meet. The 
"Crooked Billet" (of wood) was also famous; so, too, 
by 1776, the "City Tavern." Philadelphia judges 
used once to hold their courts at such houses, but as 
this increased hard drinking, the practice ceased. In 
New York City, "Bolton's Tavern," with its choice 
larder, was a famous resort for feasting, and it was 
there that Washington, when the Revolutionary War 
ended, took a farewell glass of wine with his chief 
officers. Boston had several famous inns with patriotic 
associations, and the most famous among them was 

'In the next era, a traveller mentions one of our tavern signs, 
under whose picture of a headless female the landlord, during the 
heat of the French Revolution, had inscribed the name of "the 
beheaded queen of France," and then changed, compliant with 
local opinion, to "the silent woman ;" but that story dates back 
in the mother country to Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. 

^They were presented as a nuisance in 1741, at which time they 
numbered about a hundred, all retailing liquor. 



THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 79 

of two-storied brick, known as the "Green Dragon," 
whose metal emblem crouched on a rod at the en- 
trance; there the Masons used to meet, with Joseph 
Warren for Grand Master, and there, too, sedition was 
hatched by the famous conclave, Warren, Samuel 
Adams, Otis, and Revere. In the "Raleigh Tavern," 
at Williamsburg, with a leaden bust of good Sir 
Walter for a sign, Virginia's Burgesses met to take 
action, after the Governor had dissolved their House 
for disloyal expressions to the Crown; they gathered 
in the "Apollo Room," where many a gay ball and 
dancing party had been given by the Governor's set 
in more subservient years. Stabling, we may well con- 
ceive, was an important feature of the inn for enter- 
taining travellers of that day ; and we find a Lancaster 
tavern, in Pennsylvania, put up for sale in 1772, which 
had stalls in its stables for some sixty horses. 

When a Boston hatter opened a new tavern in 1770, 
styled "The Hat and Helmet," he promised, besides 
the usual entertainment for man and beast, that his 
house would be "supplied with the newspapers for the 
amusement of his customers." 

Inns in colonial days at our trade centres furnished 
lodging and meals to men without families who en- 
gaged in local business. A Virginia tavern was, in 
1772, put up at vendue, where twenty gentlemen had 
been "constantly boarded at £25 each per annum." 
City taverns were of such publicity, that at the inn 
door, auctions used to be held of horses, carriages, or 
indeed of slaves. It was before the leading inn in one 
provincial town or another that our forefathers in the 
years of riotous resistance burned Stamp Act procla- 
mations, or effigies of the royal officials most hateful 
to them; and when independence was declared, here, 



8o AMERICANS OF 1776 

too, were bonfires made of the king's arms and em- 
blems, torn promiscuously from the public buildings 
and borne by the ringleaders of resistance.^ 



For inland conveyance, the great passenger-carrier 
of this primitive era was the stagecoach; and Ameri- 
can ambition and enterprise organized rival extensions 
of the stagecoach lines, increasing local connections 
and quickening the time of transportation. On the 
water, pulhng by oar or skimming by sail, propelled 
both passengers and freight. People travelled much by 
their own private conveyances and teamed or propelled 
their own merchandise from place to place. But by land 
or water, motive power in those days was limited by 
the speed of horses, or of a vessel impelled by wind 
or oars; and this for long distances must have been 
slow enough by comparison with the steam or electric 
appliances of locomotion with which our present age 
is familiar. And what was more, the vehicle of car- 
riage on either land or water was made more lasting 
and durable than swift, in this earlier day, as suited the 
British temperament.^ 

^Chastellux, in 1780, complained of the wretched public houses 
he encountered in those more remote parts of America where 
he casually lodged when travelling. "They make nothing in 
America at an inn," he complains, "of crowding several people 
into the same room ;" and this herding together prevailed, to his 
surprise, even among the rich and hospitable Virginian planters 
at their private mansions. The vocation of innkeeper, too, he 
found often incidental to some other personal pursuit as a house- 
holder. Innkeepers were often accosted by a military title of 
rank or served as Justices of the Peace, maintaining high office 
and political importance in their local neighborhoods. 

"For conveying freight long distances, pack-horses were used 
much in this age; and we are told of their appearance among the 
defiles of Pennsylvania, fifteen of them in single file, tethered 



THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 8i 

In Massachusetts, coaches for pubHc conveyance were 
first estabHshed in 1763, or somewhat earher, when a 
stage route was made up between Boston and Ports- 
mouth; for when, by 1771, a rival was operating on 
this route, one Mr. Stavers claimed, in a newspaper 
notice, that his was the original stagecoach and post- 
chaise line between these points, and that he, in fact, 
was the first person who ever set up and regularly 
maintained a stage in New England/ Still earlier, 
in 1756, was started the first stage between New York 
and Philadelphia, three days through; and between 
those choicest termini of traffic were several rival lines 
and rival routes before the Revolution, involving more 
or less change by water transfer. A covered Jersey 
wagon, without springs, offered the first rival line be- 
tween these two cities, followed (1766) by the so- 
called "flying machine," namely, an improved wagon 
on springs ; the latter undertook to go through in two 
days, but in winter took three as before. Shall we 
ever travel literally by a flying machine? In 1773, 
came a real stagecoach of improved pattern, by which 
one might journey in two days between Philadelphia 
and New York, paying four dollars for an inside seat 
and somewhat less for a ride on top. 

With lines thus steadily extending their facilities, 
almanacs of the day began to publish full lists of the 
public post roads with the stages, among other colo- 
nial statistics. Proprietors themselves, who com- 
bined their modest capital in partnership to consoli- 

to one another, one man leading the first horse, while another 
looked after the rest of the line. The Conestoga wagon was 
first used in Pennsylvania under another name at the time of 
Braddock's ill-fated expedition. 

'M. G., 1771, 



82 AMERICANS OF 1776 

date a business, would accost the wayfaring public 
with the most conciliatory deference and respect, to 
solicit their favors; the stage carrier was "their 
very humble servant." But all did not run smoothly. 
The Bordentown stage, in 1772, had to raise the fares 
of its passengers, owing to the high price of grain. 
The coach between Portsmouth and Boston was, in 
1768, suspended for two weeks, because of a distem- 
per which affected the horses. Our good-natured 
countryman had often to stop his horse when passing, 
to help lift the coach out of a quagmire, aiding driver 
and passengers. Shocking weather and shocking roads 
made spring and winter transportation distressing and 
uncertain. Hence we need not wonder that people 
travelled in those days rather for business than 
pleasure, and took most of their recreation within a 
few miles of home. 

There were "stage boats," so-called, at this period, 
which supplied a water connection in travel for both 
passengers and goods; each boat well provided with 
the best provisions and liquors, and guaranteed to 
make its trip on schedule time, "wind and weather 
permitting." The acme of stagecoach travel, on a 
single line, consisted in attaching four good horses, 
and having four more ready for an exchange on the 
way. Much coasting traffic was projected in these 
days. By 1771, a sloop sailed regularly once a fort- 
night between New York and Providence ; while brigs 
and sloops left Philadelphia at intervals with freight 
and passengers for Charleston and other southern 
ports along the coast. On that smooth Long Island 
Sound, through which glide each night in either 
direction those floating palaces of our present day, pro- 
pelled by steam and brilliantly lighted, the voyage to 



THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 83 

New York had its perils in bad weather. From our 
few chief harbors, packet ships pUed regularly with 
passengers, freight and the mails for London, Liver- 
pool and Londonderry; and the average passage was 
twenty-seven days between London and Boston. 

All baggage in such transportation was to be paid 
for according to weight and size; but each person 
might take with him *'a small bundle." It is of these 
"bundles" that we read much in the newspaper notices 
of "lost" or "found." Rival carriers would offer to 
take the greatest care of all "bundles and packages" 
— but not a word said of trunks. Baggage was usu- 
ally left and claimed at some local inn, which served 
for terminus. Large oaken chests of clothing were 
chiefly adapted to sea voyages; and where one's effects 
were charged by weight on an inland journey and 
shifted so frequently, each one's disposition must have 
been to travel with as little of a load as possible. In 
fact, the trunks on our stagecoaches, as remembered 
long after the Revolutionary period, were small, cov- 
ered with deer skin, or pigskin, and studded with 
brass nails. One kept his baggage under his seat and 
under his own personal supervision as much as pos- 
sible. 

Friendly companionship must have been much pro- 
moted by these long journeys, so full of humorous 
incident, and with frequent shifts, besides, to give 
variety. The long discussions indulged in on the 
route, the interchange of stories and of personal ex- 
periences for all on board to listen to, the naps and 
yawns almost in one another's arms as the hours grew 
tedious, the freshening mug of flip or mulled cider at 
the tavern, where the horses were pulled up and all 
got out for a change of posture and refreshment — 



84 AMERICANS OF 1776 

all this must have tended greatly to the mutual revela- 
tion of character, w^hile for little considerate acts of 
helpfulness few opportunities could have been better. 
Such travel, when prolonged, induces life friendships 
among the congenial thus casually brought together, 
and it affords, moreover, an admirable opportunity 
for the study of human nature. The social and the 
surly alike reveal themselves. People travelled far 
less, to be sure, in the aggregate, than they do now, 
but each tour brought them more naturally into ac- 
quaintance with one another. They who sought to 
travel with real seclusion or state, had to go by private 
conveyance. Public transportation treated the public 
alike, while staterooms, sumptuous palace cars, and 
meals served apart, — all these belong to the modern 
luxury of a republic, in the development of distinc- 
tions fostered by modern wealth and training. 



Permanent bridges on a costly scale were seldom 
erected in this age; even turnpikes at the public cost 
were unpopular, and companies with capital adequate 
to such undertakings came later. At Gray's ferry, 
Philadelphia, and other important points of approach to 
a populous city, a floating bridge might be seen, or per- 
haps a bridge of boats. For fifteen years or more be- 
fore the Revolution, Boston debated the project of a 
bridge across to Cambridge, but not till after the 
peace, or by 1786, did that debate bear fruit. Small 
bridges spanned small streams, but ferries served com- 
monly where the water space was considerable, and 
of these the traveller or post rider made successive use 
as he journeyed. These ferries, owned and managed 
by private parties, varied with the importance of the 



THE THREE PUBLIC VOCATIONS 85 

patronage. Some had nothing more for outfit than a 
simple boat or skiff, propelled by oars or sail. For 
the ampler accommodation of passengers and their 
teams, a sort of flat boat came into use; that of Charles- 
town ferry, in Massachusetts (owned by Harvard Col- 
lege), conveying five horses at a time, besides men and 
women, which was more than the average. A rope 
ferry, — such as a foreign tourist may still find upon the 
Rhine, — took Philadelphians across the Schuylkill. A 
rope, which stretched over poles the width of the river, 
was pulled to impel the ferryboat ; and if a vessel came 
by, the rope was lowered to the river bed, so that the 
vessel might sail over it. At Philadelphia, in 1772, 
the owner of the "middle ferry" advertised that he em- 
ployed three sufficient boats, with ropes and a set of 
ferrymen as good as any ; that he had complete sheds, 
troughs, wagons, horses, and stables, on both sides of 
the river. In view of such commodious arrangements, 
he hoped the public would patronize him rather than 
the ferry higher up, because his was nearer the city, 
by surveyor's measurement. Ferries were used across 
arms of the sea, or in traversing lakes, as well as for 
the narrower creeks and rivers. 



VIII 

DRESS AND DIET 

IN dress and diet, as in other matters of the indi- 
vidual Hfe, great differences prevailed among 
our colonists, because of the social distinctions 
they derived from Great Britain. The Virginia Tuck- 
ahoe wore fine clothes, drove in a stylish coach with 
livery, was very fond of horseback riding and of fair 
women. The planter of South Carolina took his fash- 
ions from London or Paris. In our other provinces, 
north or south, wealthy men, as well as women, of the 
upper set, dressed richly and even gaudily, following 
the European fashion. Our Copley portraits — and 
those, too, of Stuart and Trumbull, — show the rich- 
ness of dress then prevalent in both sexes among the 
better colonial families, and suggest differences of 
style in this respect, even among the eminent. Thus, 
in the two companion portraits of Hancock and Sam- 
uel Adams, which still hang in Fanueil Hall, we may 
contrast two leaders of aft'airs whose politics brought 
them closely together; the one foppish and fashionable, 
as of a rich and recognized family, the other more 
closely allied to the common people — Hancock with his 
gay colors, lace and frogs, and richly embroidered coat 
and vest ; Adams, whose clothes were rather of a plain 
and sober claret. 

Such early paintings recall, moreover, the gorgeous 
and rustling gowns, the silks, satins and brocades of 



DRESS AND DIET 87 

our colonial dames of quality and high breeding. 
"Silks and satins," Poor Richard used to say in those 
days, "put out the kitchen fire." Such women dressed 
in imported brocades, lute-strings, taffeties, sarsenet, 
poplin, serges, shalloons, silks and satins ; they adorned 
themselves with garnet or pearl necklaces, breast- 
flowers, aigrets, ruffles, Brussels lace, and handker- 
chiefs superfine; silk gloves and mitts, satin shoes and 
silk hose gave delicate protection ; muffs, furs and tip- 
pets were donned in the winter. They sported jaunty 
riding hats of white and black beaver, with feathers, 
or warded off rough weather with quilted bonnets 
from London. Cambrics, lawns and muslins served 
for summer wear. Dress and undress caps with be- 
coming ribbons were in demand in those days; their 
lawns were spotted or flowered; their handkerchiefs 
flower-bordered or checked. This was the era, withal, 
of stiff stays and buckram — of hoops, besides, which 
the fair freighted one would manage with consum- 
mate art and decorum when steering in or out of a 
room. 

Picta vestimenta were, in short, in that age, the 
style for ladies or gentlemen of fashion. Gold or silver 
lace on dress occasions adorned the cocked hats and 
smallclothes of men well born and well placed. Their 
coats for cold weather had ample cuffs, and were made 
with skirts reaching to the knees and stiffened with 
buckram, while tightly fitting inexpressibles were 
lined to make them warmer. No cotton fabrics were 
worn in those days, and scarcely underwear at all. 
Hose were of thread or silk in summer, and fine 
worsted in winter; men wore no suspenders, and tra- 
dition asserts that it required no little skill to keep 
one's buckskin breeches well above the hip. Young 



88 AMERICANS OF 1776 

bloods, the gay and the gallant, wore swords, withal, 
and so did military men; but elderly civilians carried 
gold-headed canes in preference, and would sit in pub- 
lic places holding the knob close to the chin ; the gold 
snuff-box, too, was used and offered with exquisite 
grace. For the general idea with men of rank was to 
look imposing, and impress upon others their superior 
claims to distinction. The three-cornered or cocked 
beaver hat and dressed wig aided in such effect, though 
adding not a little to the discomfort of the wearer, 
when under full sail, particularly when the sun's rays 
were hot. Even the boys of good family wore plain 
or laced hats for their best in those days.^ 

For protection against rude weather, we hear much 
of the camlet cloak, blue, brown or red, which vied 
for favor with the great or top coat. During the 
Revolution, our continental officers brought Dutch 
blankets into temporary use, in place of cloak or over- 
coat. Boots came into fashion with the Revolution — 
having rarely been worn before, save by mounted 
army officers. Pumps for company, adorned with 
gem or paste silver buckles, and shoes of various pat- 
terns, leather or morocco, had been the footwear, 
imported or native made;^ "spit-blacking" balls serv- 
ing for a shine. Ladies wore dainty high-heeled shoes, 
often of satin, while clogs and galoshes or pattens 
served them on the streets for rain and the wintry ex- 
posure. India rubber protection against the weather 
was unknown in those early days. Cloaks, with some- 
times an oiled linen cape, after the pattern we still 

*Beaver was in the best style, but castor or raccoon skin was 
inferior. 

''Lynn, Massachusetts, had already a reputation for shoes; and 
"slave shoes" were largely retailed in America for the lower 
classes of menials and mechanics. 



1 



DRESS AND DIET 89 

observe in the sailor's tarpaulin, guarded either sex 
against the elements; but umbrellas (called "imbril- 
los," and imported from India) came somewhat into 
fashion before the Revolution, though ridiculed as an 
effeminacy. As first imported, the umbrella was of 
varnished linen, but silk became the stylish substitute; 
made of colored stuff, green, blue, or crimson, this 
mechanism was borne aloft upon a rattan cane/ 



Ceremonious dress and ceremonious manners go to- 
gether; and if men of fashion set the pace for a stiff 
and artificial style of adornment, woman, in her imi- 
tative zeal to please and conform, was sure to stretch 
farther in the same direction. The full toilets of 
women of fashion were elaborate, especially as to the 
hair, which was arranged on crape cushions so as to 
stand high and upright. Sometimes, as we are told, 
ladies had their heads dressed the day before a ball 
or party, and slept in easy chairs to keep their hair 
in condition. In fact, the fashionable of both sexes 
gave, in this age, at home or abroad, absurd attention 
to the minutiae of wigs, perukes, and hairdressing 
generally. Women endured great torture in this re- 
spect, not to add in others, and sat for hours at a 
stretch to get the proper crisp to their curls. ^ In our 

*A New York hatter of this period offered a superior cocked 
hat of home manufacture which had a device of his own for 
shedding the rain. Franklin, when visiting Paris in 1767. saw, 
to his surprise, men as well as women carrying umbrellas in their 
hands, which they extended in case of rain or too much sun ; 
and he computed the lesser space thus occupied on the street, 
than where rich people used coaches for bad weather, as in 
London. 4. B. F. Works, 38. 

*0f the rollers or cushions, stuffed with wool, which thus fluffed 
out the natural hair, a Philadelphia paper of 1771 mentions one 



90 AMERICANS OF 1776 

chief towns and cities were barbers and hairdressers 
for both men and women, ready to wait upon cus- 
tomers at their own houses ; and at Philadelphia, an ex- 
pert from Paris proclaimed his special skill in making 
for the ladies handsome frissets, "which imitate nature, 
and may be set on with very little trouble." He would 
arrange brilliants and flowers to advantage, dress- 
ing each patroness in a style suitable to her complex- 
ion and natural hair. 

Men went in our colonial era smooth-shaven, and, if 
of the upper set, sent their wigs periodically to the 
barber to be dressed. After Braddock's defeat, how- 
ever, King George is said to have discarded his wig, 
and, at all events, wigs from that date began to go 
gradually out of fashion both at home and in these 
colonies. Next succeeded the mode of dressing one's 
natural hair by queuing or clubbing it, and wearing 
the tail with a ribbon or in a black silk bag.^ The 
passion grew among our yeomanry to have a long 
whip of hair, such as the sailor or rude plough boy 
would tie with an eel skin. Hair powder was used 
plentifully." Pomatum, too, our barbers kept on hand, 
with ribbons and silk bags of styles to suit the personal 
taste. Hair dyes were used to some extent, and for 

which fell from the head of a lady who got injured in the street, 
and which the boys, after she was borne away, kicked about as 
a football. Toilet arrangements like these, however, were not 
mere mysteries of a lady's boudoir, for a local wig-maker of that 
same year is seen advertising a hair roll of his own contrivance 
which weighed but three ounces, in place of the former eight. 

^"Imagine me," wrote Franklin in 1769, of the new French 
fashion, "with a little bag wig, showing my naked ears." 4 B. F., 

39- 

^Barbers of the Stamp-Act period sold it both for wigs and the 
natural hair; one in Philadelphia, at the sign of the bleeding 
lady and barber's pole, made it himself, and of a superior quality. 



DRESS AND DIET 91 

a lady's full outfit in her toilet lavender water and 
sal volatile were indispensable. 



"Cloathes" (the usual spelling of those days) must 
thus have taken up much of a provincial man's thoughts, 
if he claimed to belong to the aristocracy. Yet we hear 
of these splendid suits — men's as well as the women's 
— sent with economy to be dyed and turned and then 
worn again. With menials and mechanics, of course, 
and our simple yeomanry, there was no such elegance, 
save, perchance, in the wear of faded finery at second 
hand or in livery. The prevailing dress of poor 
laborers and the working class I have indicated else- 
where. Mechanics wore the coarse apron of their 
craft : caps, and plush or plain leather breeches were 
the common garb of the humble ; and these, too, wore 
largely their natural hair, cropped closely. 

In provincial times the farmer and his sons raised 
wool and flax, which the wife and daughters of the 
household spun into thread and yarn and knit into 
stockings and mittens. The next and later step, when 
patriotism preached self-dependence, was the cloth of 
homespun woolen fabric, for coats and garments. 
Such was the old-time process which gave to humble 
women one of those industrial employments all the 
better for being conducted in the home and family. 

There were a few public or meeting-house clocks in 
those days. The plain clock on the staircase might 
be consulted at home — that faithful monitor, clicking 
"never! forever!" as the poet says; but watches, 
whether of gold or silver, were not as yet in common 
use, being bulky in make as well as expensive; and, 
dispensing with fine chains, one fortunate enough to 



92 AMERICANS OF 1776 

own a portable timepiece would carry it in a fish skin 
or a case of imitation tortoise shell and use a plain rib- 
bon, from which dangled its key, with perchance a gold 
seal and cornelian stone for a companion ornament/ 
Spectacles, moreover, were rare, except for old folks, 
for the young kept and gloried in their normal eye- 
sight; but temple and bridge spectacles (the latter 
mounted on the nose without side supporters) were 
on sale for need, though clumsy for ornament. Den- 
tistry was rude enough, as compared with the present 
age; but surgeon-dentists in the larger towns fixed 
false teeth singly or in sets, and offered to do such 
work with the greatest ease, safety, and secrecy — yet 
not guaranteeing their patrons against incidental pain. 
"Essence of pearl" was a common dentifrice of the 
day. But if the truth must be told, our people as a 
whole took no great pains with their mouths, so far as 
appearance went; and long after Revolution, our 
typical young woman, as described by travellers from 
abroad, was chiefly disfigured by her poor teeth — a 
criticism which must long since have spent itself. 



As for diet, plenty and variety awaited all in this 
new world who chose to avail themselves amply of 
nature's free abundance. Deer, wild turkies, pigeons, 
partridges, were readily hunted ; wild hares and squir- 
rels were so many that people looked upon them as 
pests for devouring grain ; a host of marine fowl, can- 
vas-back ducks and other delicious game flocked about 
the shores of the Chesapeake in the autumn months. 

^In the Virginia Gazette one advertises as lost in 1775 his gold 
watch ; it is described as having a neat china dial-plate, an imita- 
tion tortoise-shell as its outer case, and a riband showing a key. 



DRESS AND DIET 93 

Wild honey gathered from the hollow tree-trunks, or 
the sap of the sugar maple, made a welcome sweetener 
for such as found the West Indies brown sugar or 
the white sugar loaf high-priced. 

Fish of the greatest variety came here to hook or 
net. The seas, the rivers, the lakes of this North At- 
lantic area yielded wealth to our English tourists 
greater than any gold mine, such as many of the King's 
charters had prospected in vain; while the colonial 
fisheries of New England proved an enterprise that 
won Burke's eloquent encomium. Lobsters, in that 
era plentiful, were found of length about equal to that 
of the men who caught them ; crabs, too, of a size much 
larger than we see in our day; and oysters actually a 
foot long. The gigantic breed of fish lessened much 
in American waters as human captors increased, with 
their intrusion, yet the rivers and bays were still amply 
stocked for human sustenance. In 1 766, at New York 
City, when meat and butter were costly, and provisions 
scarce, the common people were saved from distress 
by living upon fish and oysters. 

Codfish was already New England's peculiar em- 
blem and a leading staple of her commerce. It con- 
sisted of three sorts : ''merchantable, middling, and 
refuse ;" the first grade being sold to Europe, the sec- 
ond consumed mostly at home, and the third exported 
to negroes of the West Indies. Dunfish — so called, we 
may presume, from their dun color, though constantly 
advertised as "dumb-fish," — were the best of the three 
in quality. Disdaining to observe the Popish church- 
man's Fridays, the New Englander chose Saturday for 
his fish dinners, and no Yankee dinner on that day 
of the week was complete, while the eighteenth century 
lasted, without boiled codfish on the table, served with 



94 AMERICANS OF 1776 

pork scraps or sauce of drawn butter. Fried codfish 
balls followed for the Sunday breakfast. Codfish with 
cream pleased the palate in our middle provinces ; and 
all these native dishes were from a single variety of 
fish, when salted down for general use. Smelts, hali- 
but, perch, mackerel, trout, Potomac herring were 
among the many other kinds of fish held in esteem, 
especially when freshly caught ; terrapin was a luscious 
product of the middle and southern states, since rare 
and costly enough. But of the sturgeon, Indians par- 
took rather than the white man ; while, strange to say, 
salmon and shad, best esteemed of all fish to most 
epicures of the present day, were in that earlier age 
despised. 

Barnyard fowls, — hens, geese, ducks and chickens, 
— were raised by farmers for the family table, with 
the domestic quadrupeds besides. Beef, veal, pork and 
poultry thus supplied the table from one's own live 
stock. Hams, cured in the smoke-house, hung in the 
cellar for winter's use. Pork, pickled in brine, and 
corned beef helped out a family provender for the 
winter season. Good housewives soused and salted, 
besides, many kinds of fish and game; for there were 
no good means of keeping meat fresh in mild weather 
long after it had been killed. 



Rice went northward, as well as abroad, from South 
Carolina. Wheat in America was widely cultivated; 
and New England imported most of her ground flour 
from Maryland or Philadelphia, her own soil being 
given largely to grazing or the other grains. Rye 
grew better than wheat when our colonies were first 
settled, and Indian corn better still. Indian corn, in- 



DRESS AND DIET 95 

deed, should rank in history as the great indigenous 
cereal of America, which red aborigines cultivated be- 
fore the landing of the white man, and prepared in- 
telligently for their own simple food. Its abundance 
and variety of wholesome nutriment saved our Pil- 
grim fathers from starvation during their first intense 
tribulation, and instilled into the British-born, under 
Indian precept, new tastes and theories in cooking. 
At the foot of the old Senate staircase, in our capitol 
building at Washington, as first constructed, may be 
seen columns patterned upon stalks of the Indian corn ; 
and surely no emblem more unique or appropriate 
could be designed for a temple of this new world's 
development. 

Indian corn (or maize) and potatoes, let us bear in 
mind, are the two great indigenous food products 
which the soil of this new continent gave first to civ- 
ilized Europe; and when one speaks of Irish potatoes, 
he should recall that Ireland first gained that essential 
plant from Virginia. Beans, once more, typical of 
mental culture and nourishment from the days of 
Socrates and old Athens, were Boston's peculiar gift 
from the uncultured savage; for they were baked by 
the Indians three centuries ago, in earthen pots, just 
as we bake them to-day. 

Settlers in all these British provinces raised kitchen 
vegetables largely for their private tables; and they 
planted their own orchards, too, which blossomed and 
bore fruit in abundance — the cheery apple, chief of 
them all in juicy adaptiveness for the sons and daugh- 
ters of Adam, and still consumed by the people more 
than any other fruit. Berries and grapes grew wild 
here before our colonists transplanted them for garden 
cultivation. An asparagus bed yielded in those times 



96 AMERICANS OF 1776 

the first table delicacy of the season among native 
vegetables; and sweet corn came last — rnot with toma- 
toes, however, as nowadays, for, as yet, the tomato was 
commonly thought poisonous. 

Nutmegs, cinnamon, pepper, and the other spices 
still favored were thus early in use, though much of 
the grinding of them, as well as of coffee, was done 
at home; salt in America was largely an imported 
article, from Lisbon or Liverpool, or from one of the 
British Bahamas, known as Turk's Island. Molasses, 
brown sugar, and London refined sugar were used for 
sweetening, while a sugar loaf was cut by shears into 
lumps for company occasions. Lemons and China 
oranges were imported as an ingredient for punch. 
For this was a tippling age among men, and of Amer- 
ica's early settlers of the sterner sex it used to be said, 
that they drank water only when they could get noth- 
ing else. Sobriety, to be sure, was favored by the 
religious and those of strong principle. But total ab- 
stinence men seldom preached, either here or abroad. 

Excessive liquor-drinking was, in truth, America's 
great social vice, until far down into the nineteenth 
century, when temperance crusades first began. A 
rude climate, hard labor and exposure, with but little 
light recreation, increased the indulgence among our 
common people ; while convivial habits, after the coarse 
fashion of the mother country, might debauch the 
upper circles. Idleness and ease gave to one class oc- 
casion for using stimulants; while another drank to 
relieve thirst or to vary the tedium of life. The sale 
of liquors was licensed in our several provinces, so as 
to produce a revenue; and one seldom saw a respected 
city merchant or a country grocer, who did not make 
liquors of one sort or another a very important part of 



DRESS AND DIET 97 

his stock in trade, as well as an inducement for indi- 
vidual customers to purchase. Bakers and apothe- 
caries retailed ardent spirits. Distilleries, too, were 
quite a respectable industry. Stern Samuel Adams at 
one time ran such an establishment next his Boston 
dwelling-house, though he did not succeed well in the 
business ; and scores of such factories were maintained 
near the chief seats of commerce. 



Our native gentry, when they took wine, preferred 
Maderia, Oporto or Malaga, to French wines, true 
to English prejudices; London ale and porter were 
imported, with brandy, gin (or "Geneva"), and wine 
bitters besides. Philadelphians brewed hop beer; 
ginger was worked up into pop or other compounds, 
but America's great alcoholic beverage was the New 
England or Jamaica rum, distilled from molasses. 
Even cider — that delicious crush from a prime orchard 
product — could not stand on its own more innocent 
merit, but brandy was vaunted as its fit preservative. 

Rum was widely commended for medicinal use — 
as a summer corrective after drinking too much cold 
water, or as an ingredient with nauseous physic, in 
treating the bloody purge. Rum punch was in choice 
esteem, flavored with shrub, lemon, or orange juice; 
and so was grog, or plain rum and water; a mixture 
known as toddy when sugar was added to it. Often 
and often does the report of a fatal accident in those 
days indicate that the injurer or his victim was drunk, 
or that one who rode alone, half-mellow, fell into the 
snares of the vicious, to be robbed or murdered.^ 

^In rural towns of New York, so Chastellux tells us, somewhat 
later, much intoxication prevailed on New Year's Day; and 



98 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Punch was dealt from the flowing bowl at weddings, 
funerals, college commencements, and on public occa- 
sions generally; at elections, too, where, in Virginia, 
candidates of the gentry were expected to spend 
money, not to bribe but to "treat" their constituents. 
Travellers by stagecoach freshened the nip together 
when dismounting at the change of horses to stretch 
their legs, and the egg flip, heated by the plunge of 
the red-hot loggerhead or poker, was a favorite mix- 
ture for cold weather. Liquors were kept on the side- 
table of many a stately mansion for guests and callers. 
They were served at auctions to make bidders fast 
and furious in their competition.^ 

Hard drinking prevailed among our colonial gentry, 
much as in the mother country; and in the bibulous 
feasting after a hard day's sport, men of fashion 
thought it good fun to get friends into that state of 
booziness where they would slide under the table and 
fall asleep. Most convivial songs of the day induced 
the whole company to drink repeated bumpers. Formal 
toasts with the clinking of glasses were the common 
accompaniment of a public dinner; while the custom 
of drinking healths even at private meals caused many 

boisterous youths made midnight rounds, as the old year expired, 
with uproar and the firing of pistols, calling at each tavern to 
get the guests who were abed to send money downstairs and 
treat them to a drink. 

^A Boston gazette of 1771 recites eighty English phrases then 
current in the vernacular to denote a good fellow who is more 
or less imder alcoholic influence. While Dutch colonists liked 
beer, most of British stock preferred the distilled liquors. We 
see Philadelphia Quakers complaining in the press of the too 
frequent drams then habitual, and of early temptation in giving 
young children a taste from the tumbler or letting them get at the 
sugar leavings of their elders. In the New York Prices Current 
of 1770 the price of rum is quoted next after bread. 



DRESS AND DIET 99 

to drink imprudently, lest personal offence should be 
given. That fashion seemed all the more absurd, when 
people sat at long, cornered tables instead of round 
ones, and hence could not well see the fellow-guest who 
saluted. At decorous dinner parties, such as Wash- 
ington himself gave when commander-in-chief or 
President, there was often more of ceremony than com- 
pliment in such interruption of the meal ; and strangers 
seated far apart would mournfully fill glasses and 
drink in unison, unable to exchange a word with one 
another. 

Tobacco and snuff were in this era a common stimu- 
lant or sedative, according to the temperament of the 
taker. Tobacco was not seldom a portable standard, 
at the south, as a substitute for money — just as it be- 
came there during our Civil War; and we read that, 
in 1723, Maryland imposed fines payable in tobacco, 
for selling strong liquors or brandy. The clergy of 
Virginia were long paid their salaries in this conveni- 
ent commodity. Tobacco in a pipe, or smoking, was a 
great solace; but our people chewed tobacco besides, 
while cigars came in a later era. For a long time, 
Virginia tobacco was imported to England, to be made 
up there and reimported for colonial consumption ; but 
Philadelphia makers offered their "Kite-foot tobacco" 
and snuff, by 1772, as equal to any imported. Tobacco 
was one of the red man's chief indigenous plants, raised 
for the old world's renovation — to some a detestable 
weed, to others the herb of supreme pleasure. 



Americans inherited largely the British tastes and 
appetite, — with abundance of meat and hearty dishes 
plainly cooked; but they ate too fast, and the hot 



loo AMERICANS OF 1776 

bread and biscuits of which they partook brought on 
dyspepsia. In a somewhat later era, when Jefferson 
brought back from Paris, after serving there as min- 
ister, a fastidious taste for French wines and cookery, 
Patrick Henry denounced him on the stump in a poUti- 
cal canvass, as a recreant to roast beef, and one who 
"abjured his native victuals." One of Poor Richard's 
maxims reflects upon the uncurbed native appetites of 
this earlier age: ''I saw," he says, "a few die of starva- 
tion, but hundreds of eating and drinking." Sermons 
were published and discourses printed in colonial al- 
manacs on such excesses. But our people were hard 
workers, commonly in a hurry to get through the meal 
hour, intent upon the cares and routine of life, and 
little given to table relaxation. 

There were, of course, the lighter beverages, such as 
tea, coffee and chocolate, of which the two sexes par- 
took together, or women apart. Bohea came much 
into use among the fair sex, by way of stimulant; 
though nervous disorders, it was claimed, increased in 
consequence. Taxed tea, we all know, was emptied 
overboard; and in those throbbing years when fam- 
ilies denied themselves of spring lamb for the sake of 
encouraging wool breeding, and when seniors al. Har- 
vard unanimously resolved to wear home-made broad- 
cloth on the day of graduation, the women of America 
were not behind in noble self-denial. In place of the 
Chinese decoction, a native berry substitute called 
"Labrador tea" came widely into use about 1768 — 
"that naseous weed," one writes of it; and the spin- 
ning-wheel was put to rapid revolution. Spinning- 
wheel parties were given by New England "daughters 
of liberty," who would rival one another in turning 
out so many skeins of yarn in an hour. The product 



DRESS AND DIET loi 

of parish contests of this kind, in labor and materials, 
was usually bestowed upon the pastor; and when 
Labrador tea was served up at the parsonage after- 
wards, with other refreshments, the young men came 
upon the scene to praise the busy virgins and close the 
occasion in singing liberty songs. While the pleasur- 
able excitement was on, women dressed in homespun 
when visiting, even to handkerchiefs and gloves. 
"Save your money and you save your country," was 
the maxim of the day. But by 1772, the spinning fad 
had subsided, and ladies of the higher circle went back 
to Bohea and their London fineries. History shows 
that the non-importation league worked hard for our 
luxurious consumers of British goods, who at heart 
were fond as ever of them ; and that the middle prov- 
inces, New York in particular, broke down badly 
under so strenuous a test, causing an abandonment for 
the time of home-made wearing apparel, and of home- 
made substitutes for the Chinese beverage. 



Franklin sent home to Philadelphia, in 1758, some 
breakfast cloths, which he picked up in London, where 
nobody (as he found) breakfasted upon the "naked 
table;" also some carpeting for the guest-room floor, 
and some printed calicoes (a new invention) to make 
bed and window curtains; and he looked up, besides, 
for his daughter Sally a London harpsichord. Some 
China bowls and coffee cups he bought, in addition, 
and their interesting little figures he wished his wife 
to look at with her spectacles, for they would well bear 
examining. As he travelled about in the course of 
his long mission as colonial agent, he could not forbear 
making comparisons between resident Britons and the 



I02 AMERICANS OF 1776 

people of his own land in point of average comfort. 
While the spinners and weavers of England, as he 
noted, wore rags that they might make cloths and 
stuffs for all parts of the world — while in Scotland 
men went barefoot to export their shoes and stockings 
— while in Ireland the peasantry lived all the year 
round on potatoes and buttermilk, shirtless, so as to 
send to other countries beef, butter, and linen — Amer- 
ica was well clad and well fed. In England, civil so- 
ciety depressed multitudes to the savage plane that a 
few might be raised in rank and fortune. On the 
other hand, ''every man in New England is a free- 
holder, has a voice in public affairs, lives in a tidy, warm 
house, has plenty of good food and fuel, with whole 
clothes from head to foot, the manufacture perhaps of 
his own family."^ 

^4 B. R, 440 (1772). 



IX 

RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 

WITH the rich and luxurious of a community 
work consists in devising means of 
amusement; while scholars and brain 
workers seek a vacation wherein the mind may relax 
its energies. But toilers with the hands — the great 
mass of humanity — find most of their real recreation in 
life by turning its needful work into pleasure; and 
going through the vale of misery or dulness, they use 
its pools for wells of water. Farmers have their husk- 
ing or logging bees, their barn-raisings, their harvest 
homes, and Nature herself relieves the monotony of an 
agricultural life by the varying tasks of the seasons. 
The mind need never be wholly torpid in a new country. 
To social recreations and amusements in the colonial 
period our common people did not strongly incline. On 
the whole, they were soberly set ; they worked hard for 
a living, and when not working they stayed at home and 
found ease with their friends and families. To most of 
our native born, withal, the local horizon of life was 
not ample; and from one's dwelling house as a central 
point, a radius of twenty miles might have described 
the whole circumference, in those days, of average 
observation. When Americans of that century went 
out to see the world they travelled by horse and car- 
riage, and such meagre vacations as they might allow 
themselves were passed not far from home. Sunday 



I04 AMERICANS OF 1776 

recurred one day in seven, and on rare occasion came 
a secular holiday besides. There was, of course, no 
pleasure travel on the Sabbath, but a sort of surprise 
party for a weekday was made up by harnessing the 
family carryall and making an unexpected descent, with 
young and old, for a dinner and a day's outing at some 
of the folks, resident ten or fifteen miles away; for a 
corresponding absence from home or preoccupation was 
never to be presumed. Long rides at all times gave 
opportunity for breaking the journey and dropping in 
upon friends unawares, that a call might haply merge 
into the acceptance of an ampler hospitality. Surprise 
parties made thus a pleasurable excitement on either 
side, to which any household was liable. 

All this, of course, involved making one's self at 
home, and the character of the entertainment was meant 
to be homelike, though putting the good housewife to 
her best. Americans of this age, as a whole, were 
neither vivacious nor given to the lighter dissipations 
of life. Chastellux, whom I so often quote, could not, 
as a lively Frenchman, get great enjoyment, even from 
those of rank and fortune whom he visited here. In 
bad winter weather, as he relates, when snow and stress 
kept our country gentlemen in doors, the hearty eating 
and drinking went on earnestly enough; the men en- 
joyed some good conversation among themselves while 
the women were absent. But not a word would he hear 
of light games with playing cards while thus con- 
fined to the house; and as to music, drawing or read- 
ing aloud, he found very little. 



It must not be supposed, however, that table games 
indoors were unknown here thus early, or that the fair 



I 



II 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 105 

sex took no part in them. Among those strict in re- 
ligious tenets playing cards were widely denounced as 
frivolous and a device of Satan; yet packs were cer- 
tainly imported into America to a considerable extent 
before our Revolution, and in genteel society many of 
the lighter games were indulged in by both sexes. 
Among Philadelphia's upper ten one might at parties 
play promiscuously, though "commerce" was the only 
game of which the proper approved. It was in Boston, 
as late as 1782, that Chastellux played his first game 
of whist after coming to America; and there, by the 
way, he observed that social leaders were much dis- 
posed to cultivate foreigners of distinction who brought 
from abroad good letters of introduction. For a well- 
bred tete-a-tete in our higher circles, chess, checkers or 
backgammon might serve to beguile the long winter 
evenings. 

While the Continental Congress sat at Phila- 
delphia, in Revolutionary times, that city became the 
centre of social gayety for all America, despite its sedate 
atmosphere; and thither flocked a motley and mutable 
society, which comprised not only statesmen and civil- 
ians from all the thirteen States or colonies, but mili- 
tary officers, besides, of the Continental Army, and 
French compatriots on war and pleasure bent. During 
the winter months of those years a subscription ball or 
assembly was given, with dances and partners arranged 
by billet and signature; whereby, as French beaux com- 
plained, men and women bound themselves as by pre- 
contract for an entire evening. Neither waltz nor polka 
appeared on the list in those days; but programme 
dances, such as they were, bore such names as "Bur- 
goyne's surrender," "the Campaign success" or "Clin- 
ton's retreat." Distinguished patriots and their wives 



io6 AMERICANS OF 1776 

figured on the list of managers, and the affair came 
off, after the London fashion, at some public hall. 
About midnight, dancing was suspended for a supper, 
after which the ball went on until two in the morning, 
the final time for dispersing. 

The select dancing assembly had been something of 
a social function among the colonial gentry at our chief 
provincial capitals long before the Revolution; and 
Jefferson, one of those Virginia youths who were fond 
of dancing, used to recall with delight winter balls at 
the Raleigh tavern in Williamsburg, which he used to 
attend while a college student at William and Mary's. 
As far back as 1765 and the Stamp Act we read of a 
ball given at Boston, in which the British army and 
navy officers were prominent — a brilliant social affair. 
In 1774 Virginia's tide-water gentry honored by a pub- 
lic dance the anniversary of St. Tammany, and the ball 
was opened by men dressed in Indian costume. But 
from all such gatherings mechanics and the trades- 
people were excluded, for social lines were carefully 
drawn, as in England. 

Dancing schools were set up already in Philadelphia, 
Boston, New York and other large colonial towns, and 
the agile dancing-master invaded at intervals the more 
quiet communities, to instruct people in the graces of 
fashion. Many such instructors were French immi- 
grants, versatile in the polite accomplishments. It was 
not uncommon for one to teach French or music be- 
sides, to give lessons in fencing with the small sword 
or in playing upon the violin or guitar. The sprightly 
foreigner might be seen mincing the steps with violin 
or bow in hand, and showing our sexes apart how to 
behave in fine company. A dancing-master from Paris 
was the French instructor at Harvard College. French 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 107 

women, too, helped fill the conjugal purse in such pur- 
suits; and one fencing-master's wife, fresh from Paris, 
advertised to take in fine washing, starched lawns, 
muslins and laces, and proffered, moreover, to teach 
young ladies either the French tongue or elegant em- 
broidery. 



"Concert hall" was the usual name of the building 
at our American centres where dances or musical per- 
formances came off. For besides subscription balls 
were subscription concerts for people of means and 
fashion. A series, vocal and instrumental, would be 
announced in Boston, New York or Philadelphia, last- 
ing perhaps for six or eight weeks, with one concert 
a week, and drawing "a very polite company." Such 
evening amusements came off rather early, 6.30 being 
a favorite hour. Gentlemen or their liveried servants 
purchased for both sexes; and as these concerts were 
select affairs, one who inclined to subscribe could learn 
the terms by applying at the hall, all season tickets being 
sent to the several subscribers. The usual price of 
tickets for a single concert was half a dollar. Airs and 
duets were sung, and some skilful solo vocalist or per- 
former upon the violin, French horn, hautboy or harpsi- 
chord gave special zest to the programme. Occasion- 
ally a chorus or two was added from some standard 
composition. Sometimes a royal regimental band would 
aid the performance, especially if the occasion were a 
public one. Handel was decidedly the favorite com- 
poser, as programmes were then made up, and selections 
were given from his "Acis and Galatea," or his Corona- 
tion anthem, or finally from the '"Messiah." 

Many of the occasional concerts of those times were 



io8 AMERICANS OF 1776 

benefit concerts, in fact, for some local organist or 
music teacher, who arranged and conducted the per- 
formance for his own emolument.^ At a Boston con- 
cert of 1 77 1, Mr. Propert between the acts performed 
some select pieces on the guitar and "forte-piano" — 
the latter instrument quite a novelty then in these 
colonies, and named with the compound words in that 
order. Sometimes, where the audience was select and 
composed of subscribers, the hall was cleared at the end 
of a concert and the young and frolicsome remained for 
a dance. On rare occasion the full concert programme 
was published by the press ;^ but it was not in good 
form to announce publicly the names of the performers, 
since most of them were amateurs who moved in good 
society. 

Then, as in all eras of mankind when polished people 
gathered as an audience, were to be seen the elderly 
and sedate, who came to be edified by the performance, 
and the young and giddy, whose chief enjoyment was 
in one another. Bostonians were always wont to carry 
their complaints to the press ; and an anonymous citizen 
of the former description is seen airing his grievances 
in the local newspaper in a tone of well-bred sarcasm. 
"Should not these young lovers," he inquires, "either 

^See in Boston, 1772-73, the eager rivalry in this respect 
between two church organists of that day, Propert and Selby, as 
recorded by the local press. 

"The programme of a benefit concert given in 1771 by a British 
regimental band may be worth quoting here. Act ist comprised 
Handel's overture to Ptolemy ; a song, "From the East Breaks 
the Morn ;" a concerto by Stanley and a symphony by Bach. 
Act 2d began with a duet, "Turn, Fair Clora," followed by an 
organ concerto and a symphony by Stamily. For Act 3d came 
an overture by Abel, a duet, "When Phoebus the Tops of the 
Hills," a violin solo, a new hunting song, and a symphony by 
Ricci. 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 109 

sit quiet and languish while the music goes on, or, if 
wishing to give a vocal accompaniment, mount the 
stage? Would not the thoughtless young lady with 
greater propriety defer her animadversions upon fid- 
dlers, mantuamakers, milliners, high-frizzed heads and 
sword knots, until she retires home to supper with her 
friends? Might not the two sexes, when under the 
irresistible impulse to converse, content themselves, 
while a piece is being performed, with the usual elo- 
quence of the eyes, assisted by certain languishing 
attitudes of the body and half a dozen melting 
sighs?" 

Music, ''heavenly maid," gave the motive for many 
a social gathering in our private colonial houses, each 
guest who could play or sing tolerably bearing part 
in the general entertainment. One young lady would 
play the spinet or harpsichord, another sing with a 
harp accompaniment. In the less serious efforts there 
were pretty love songs, some of them quite sentimental. 
The manly vocalist went hunting, roamed the sea as 
pirate, did deeds of imaginary prowess, or even in 
mixed company avowed himself an unrestrained votary 
of Bacchus. Church music, with anthems, plain psalm- 
ody or fugue-like phrasing, was often heard in the 
houses, and adjusting one's voice to the four-part 
meander of harmony through hymns of many verses, 
friends made a Sabbath evening happy when the tuneful 
of both sexes came together. Americans in a cultured 
or uncultured way were fond of music, and the rural 
singing-school was a memorable delight. Young men 
and women made harmony together of bass, treble, alto 
and tenor in the rural choir loft Sundays, looking down 
upon the congregation below, who turned during the 
last hymn to face them. 



no AMERICANS OF 1776 

Other entertainments were recognized in those days 
as worthy of the people's patronage. Lectures were 
advertised at our larger towns with philosophical ex- 
periments "for the entertainment of the curious." 
Such exhibitors pursued Franklin's tests with elec- 
tricity, or produced suction by the air pump, or showed 
how Iron could be heated in cold water. While the 
King's accredited agent was negotiating with the 
Indian tribes, a Seneca chief, taken by his white enter- 
tainers to one of these shows at Philadelphia, was 
strongly impressed by the artificial thunder and light- 
ning of the lecturer's creation. Other courses were 
given in 1772 in our Quaker city upon "pleasant and 
useful geography," where the figure and motion of the 
earth were explained, with the moon's phases as affect- 
ing wind and tide. One favorite lecturer in these 
colonies, less serious, made "Heads" his subject in a 
so-called "moral and satirical" exhibition. Wigs and 
ladies' headdresses he would put on or off in turn, with 
grimace and mimicry appropriate to each wearer ; songs 
were interspersed, and the performance usually wound 
up with some comic or dramatic recitation. Nor even 
thus early was the roving magician of two hemispheres 
wanting, who had had the honor of appearing before 
sundry crowned monarchs of Europe, at their palaces, 
and yet was not too proud to perform privately in any 
plain citizen's house for a special remuneration.^ 

^One of these "masters of sleight of hand and magic," who 
exhibited his "surpassing performances" at a shilling a head, 
thus epitomizes his feats in the Pennsylvania Chronicle of 1769: 
(i) He produced fruit on a table as natural as though grown 
on trees. (2) He showed an infallible method of curing all 
scolding wives. (3) He devoured iron and steel as ladies would 
eat a bit of bread and butter, and washed down the food with 
liquor which streamed from several parts of his body, "to the 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS iii 

The ingenious Mrs. Wright was another caterer to 
pubhc recreation in those days. Wonderful imitations 
of nature were comprised in her wax- work collection; 
and various personages of distinction in the Old and New 
World had condescended to sit to her for their "effigies" 
while she was abroad, his Majesty himself among the 
number. Dr. Franklin, Garrick, the actor, and Mrs. 
Catherine McCauley, "the celebrated female his- 
torian,"^ were among the life-like specimens to be seen 
in her show; while imaginary figures presented Cain's 
murder of Abel and the treachery of Delilah to Sam- 
son. - 

Feats of horsemanship were displayed on pleasant 
afternoons for several weeks during the autumn of 
1773, at the bottom of the mall in Boston Common, 
by a Mr. Bates, another protege of the sovereigns of 
Europe, who condescended to a tour of these colonies. 
He would mount and manage one, two or three horses, 
and his performance ended with an equestrian bur- 
lesque entitled "The Tailor Riding to Brentford." Seats 
were arranged secure from danger at his exhibitions, 

amaze of the spectators." (4) He dissolved silver and other 
metal without the help of fire. (5) He showed how a Prussian 
spy vanished in the French camp and then reappeared in Prussia 
with his report. Besides all this, he performed various tricks 
with eggs, money and cards ; he showed the shape and form of 
the person designed for one's future spark or mistress, and fore- 
told what lady in the audience would be first married; "with 
fifty or more other imposing things too tedious to be inserted." 

^This learned lady, whose name anticipates the greater historian 
of the next century, presented in 1772 a set of her works, in six 
volumes, to the Redwood Library of Newport. 

^While these wax-works were in New York City for exhibition, 
children at their careless play set her house on fire, and, most 
unfortunately, the whole collection perished, with the exception 
of Whitefield and John Dickinson, both of whose figures were 
rescued from the flames. 



112 AMERICANS OF 1776 

but the spectator was kindly requested to bring no dogs 
with him. It appears that this new courtier of the 
pubHc attempted the exorbitant price of a dollar for 
the best seats at his performance; but jealous opinion 
compelled him to lower his rates. For in an angry- 
pamphlet which came out in Boston, styled "Bates 
Weighed in the Balance," it was proven that his exhi- 
bitions at such a price were impoverishing, disgraceful 
to human nature and a downright breach of the Eighth 
Commandment. 

Exhibitions in those early days involved, we may 
infer, no such lavish outlay as is now customary; and 
claims upon the public were put forward tentatively 
and with much deference. A maiden dwarf, fifty-three 
years old and only 22 inches high, who had come to 
pay a visit in America "at the advice of some gentle- 
men," offered to exhibit herself as a show to such 
ladies and gentlemen as were desirous of gratifying 
their curiosity, at a shilling, lawful money, for each 
person. But the mountebank drew to his free show 
a gaping and impecunious crowd ; and in 1771 a fearful 
catastrophe was nearly the result of such a gathering 
near New York City. An imposingly dressed quack 
doctor, who sold his nostrums from a movable 
stage in Brooklyn and diverted bystanders with his 
harangues, aided by the tricks of a merry andrew, 
drew hundreds across the East River daily. Once at 
sunset, when the day's business was over, a crowd of 
returning spectators swarmed upon the Brooklyn ferry- 
boat to return, no of them in all. The overcrowded 
vessel struck a rock, and the loss of life would have been 
immense had not those in danger been rescued at the 
last moment by other boats, which struck out boldly 
from the shore to save them. The New York press 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 113 

sermonized upon the lasting impression to be made 
by this incident upon all concerned — first by the im- 
minent prospect of immediate death, and next by so 
Providential a deliverance. 



But theatricals in that age fared hard in most prov- 
inces, so strongly was the prejudice of our people set 
against them, whatever might be said for other public 
amusements. Virginia and her rulers, however, showed 
much tolerance in that respect; and the first dramatic 
performance ever given on our American mainland 
by a regular company of actors, sheltered in a suitable 
auditorium, was seen at Williamsburg, the capital of 
that province, on the 5th of September, 1752. Shake- 
speare most fitly introduced the British drama to our 
new world; and the curtain rose to his "Merchant of 
Venice," a farce entitled "Lethe" closing the perform- 
ance. It was Lewis Hallam who organized these players 
under the style of the "American Company;" they were 
brought over from London in May, and performed in 
Annapolis and the Maryland colony, so some assert, as 
early as July, and, hence, previous to the Williamsburg 
performance.^ But the theatre at Williamsburg, fitted 
up and opened by direct permission from Governor 
Dinwiddle, had the full equipment of pit, box, gallery 
and stage. Both Maryland and Virginia gave en- 
couragement to Hallam' s company in those years, and 
furnished good audiences at Annapolis and Williams- 
burg until the Revolution broke out, when amusements 
in the colonies were mostly prohibited by local law, 
and the company sailed for the British West Indies, 
having meanwhile performed occasionally in Charles- 
^See Scharf's Baltimore. 



114 AMERICANS OF 1776 

ton, South Carolina, and in the great middle prov- 
inces. 

Garrick led in the British theatricals of that era, and 
here, as in London, his taste and style as actor and 
purveyor for the stage predominated. Players alter- 
nated between the grave and gay ; "The Beggar's Opera" 
was the favorite among comic musical dramas, and an 
evening performance which began with solemn tragedy 
would close with a roaring farce. This "American 
Company" was heralded as from London ; and affection 
or disaffection toward the mother country had much 
to do with determining the public attitude toward it. 
Provincial governors gave generally a readier license 
than the local legislatures, and citizens of the court and 
Tory party favored the drama under such auspices, 
while the rebellious Whigs opposed it. 

In New York City a regular theatre was opened in 
1 761, under the patronage of Governor Delancy, whom 
the Assembly and its Presbyterian leaders violently 
opposed on that issue, claiming that all theatricals 
tended to debauch the public morals. There, in May, 
1766, while distress extensively prevailed, religious 
opposition pleaded specially the temptation to which the 
poor were exposed at such a time to squander their 
money foolishly. The wrath of the inhabitants was 
accordingly kindled. A mob broke through the doors 
of the little theatre with noise and tumult just as the 
drama began ; the play was interrupted, and actor and 
audience — those before and those behind the foot- 
lights — fled for their lives. Some were dangerously 
hurt; the theatre, no solid structure, was quickly de- 
molished, and a bonfire was made of the remnants.^ 
Yet reaction came ; and a few years later New Yorkers 
'M. G., 1766. 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 115 

enjoyed the play phlegmatically at a new theatre on 
John Street. There, the American Company, by per- 
mission of his Excellency the Governor, opened in 
April, 1772, with comedy and farce, continuing its 
season for sixweeks. Milton's "Comus," one of theplays, 
gave scope for fairy scenes, transparencies and a rude 
sort of ballet ; while another play of less lofty poetic 
merit concluded with a country dance by all the char- 
acters. The band of his Majesty's regiment of royal 
Welsh fusileers was detailed at these performances by 
way of orchestra. The doors opened at 5.30 in 
the afternoon, and the performance began an hour 
later. 

Both in New York and Philadelphia performances 
in those days were commonly set for once or twice in 
the week. At Philadelphia by 1772 we see a new 
American theatre in the suburb of Southwark, where 
performances went on "by authority," as the play bill 
announced. Sometimes the programme was "Romeo 
and Juliet," followed by the "Old Maid ;" sometimes the 
comic opera "Love in a Village" was afterpiece to the 
"Mourning Bride." A new play which had quite a good 
run was styled "The Shipwreck of the Brothers," and the 
local press vouched for the sentiments of this highly 
attractive drama as "of the utmost propriety." The 
doors of this theatre were opened at 4 and the play 
began at 6 o'clock sharp. Places in the boxes might be 
reserved by ladies and gentlemen who sent their 
servants at the former hour. Tickets, "without which 
no persons could be admitted," were sold at the bar 
of the coffee house. The boxes were priced at 7s. 6d. ; 
the pit at 5s. ; the gallery at 3s. Malicious rogues 
broke into the gallery one day and carried off the 
iron spikes which divided the gallery seats from the 



ii6 AMERICANS OF 1776 

upper boxes; a reward was offered for their appre- 
hension/ 

Elocution, or the so-called "lecture," was a substi- 
tute, or rather subterfuge, for the play in some Ameri- 
can centres, while laws or the local magistrates placed 
theatricals under the ban. Thus in 1769, at Philadel- 
phia, began a series of readings, which soon merged 
into the recitation of a play or of a whole opera, such 
as "Love in a Village," with all the music and parts. So, 
too, in Boston, that same year, at a large room in 
Brattle Street, were sung all the songs and personated 
all the characters of the popular "Beggar's Opera;" an 
experienced actor and singer proposing in his printed 
card "to enter into the different humors or passions as 
they change throughout." In this Puritan town raged 
through the following year a tempest of controversy 
between the strait-laced and the scoffers. One pam- 
phlet in which a polemic divine arraigned the stage as 
"the highroad to hell" called forth a response, dated 
from London, applying a like epithet to the pulpits. 
Such blasphemy boded little good to the cause of the 
drama. The laws of the Massachusetts province still 
sternly forbade play-acting, and Boston's selectmen 
suppressed theatricals with a firm hand. 

^This Southwark theatre, the only one in or about Philadelphia 
until after our Revolution, appears to have been first erected in 
1766 to accommodate the Hallam Company, which played after 
1759 in that city to fairly good houses. But theatricals in Phila- 
delphia had fared hardly at first. According to Mr. Watson, 
the "Tragedy of Cato" was enacted there as early as 1749. The 
Quakers expressed their disgust, and the magistrates drove the 
players from the city. In 1754, once more, under a permission 
carefully restricted in terms, theatrical performances were re- 
sumed at Philadelphia, while those opposed to the stage sent 
broadcast their pamphlets of denunciation. — Watson's Phila- 
delphia. 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 117 

In vain did our Royalists contend that an act of 
Parliament had the effect of superseding a provincial 
prohibition so as to make dramatic entertainments law- 
ful in fact throughout all America. The trend of native 
politics certainly was not to sustain a constitutional 
theory of that color ; and the more theatricals appealed 
to the public as a political issue, upheld with the Tory 
cause, the more intense became the hostility of patriots. 
During the bloody strife of independence, British 
officers, while in forcible control of Boston, New York 
or Philadelphia, might give scope to dramatic perform- 
ances; but as a rule, in all these thirteen colonies the 
Revolutionary War swept plays and play-actors aside, 
with all other frivolous amusements, and their rein- 
statement was at least postponed to a new era of inde- 
pendence and union. 



Besides the indoor recreations I have described were 

many borrowed or adapted from the mother country, 
both romping and sedate. Blind man's buff — or per- 
haps "still palm," its less boisterous substitute — befitted 
a rustic frolic ; and so, still better, those various games 
which mate off partners — girls and fellows — to the 
amusing confusion of the bashful. Forfeits in the 
games of both sexes together induced kissing and other 
familiarities; while bundling, the coarsest of all pro- 
miscuous frolics of the embracing sort, seems to have 
been known in the middle provinces and New England, 
if not brought over from the mother country. In 
dances, however, the sexes maintained their distance 
better than in modern times. 

From Strutt and other English writers of that day we 
gain insight into the out-of-door sports and pastimes 



ii8 AMERICANS OF 1776 

of the people of Merry England, and these came nat- 
urally enough to our English colonies also. Cricket 
was never popular in this country ; it was a slow game, 
and required, besides a holiday, some costly preparation 
on chosen grounds. But games rapidly played, easily 
improvised on any open lot, and inexpensive to arrange, 
such as football, marbles, kite-flying, baseball and 
hockey, were much in favor here. In climbing, jump- 
ing, leaping and wrestling, amateurs measured them- 
selves against one another. Bowling, too, and pitching 
quoits found their votaries. But the gymnasium had 
scarce an existence, for people trained their muscles 
over daily tasks which yielded something in return. 
During our cold northern winters, the steel-shod 
skater skimmed the frozen pond or river; while swim- 
ming in the summer time was a pastime everywhere to 
which nature freely invited. So good a swimmer was 
Franklin in his youth as to astonish even Englishmen 
by his feats in the Thames while serving his brief 
apprenticeship abroad ; and in fact he nearly 
missed the high destiny in store for him in the land 
of his birth, for he once thought of becoming a Lon- 
don athlete and opening in that city a swimming 
school. 

They who kept a horse and carriage were not at a 
loss for riding parties in summer or winter; nor for 
going sparking with a single sleigh or sulky. Punch 
or a mug of flip warmed the inner extremities when 
the merry sleighers alighted at some country tavern, 
perchance to tread a measure on its polished parlor floor 
before betaking themselves once more to the buffalo 
robes and jangle of bells on the homeward trip, while 
the stars twinkled in the dark canopy overhead. Of 
summer recreations, chiefly among the leisure set or 



RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 119 

those who found a holiday, tradition preserves a record. 
New Yorkers made excursions up the Hudson or East 
River to enjoy a turtle or fishing frolic, or took a day's 
picnic in the woods together. Rhode Islanders had 
even thus early their clambake or chowder parties. 
Thirty or forty ladies and gentlemen would drive a 
few miles out of town to meet and dine, amuse 
themselves among nature's surroundings, and re- 
turn in their chaises suitably paired. We see 
foreign caterers contending for patronage of this 
character.^ 

An exhibition of fireworks gave emphasis already to 
a public or private celebration. From China we derive 
the pyrotechnic art, in adapting a deadly explosive for 
harmless sport and display, which nations more civ- 
ilized employ rather for the destruction of their fellow- 
men. Our ancestors here could use gunpowder for 
serious effect, as the course of that century showed ; the 
wild beast, the savage, the redcoat, dropped before their 
steady aim ; but beyond flashing off the black grains or 
firing a salute, they seldom wasted those destroying 
compounds upon mere effect. London, however, sent 
over its pyrotechnist to minister to colonial allegiance 
and enhance the pomp of royal birthdays. Thus in 
1772, on an occasion when Philadelphia's State House 
was to be illuminated and a grand concert given "by 
permission," the day's celebration was arranged to con- 
clude with "a superb firework, such as the performers 

^In the suburbs of Philadelphia, a Frenchman opened a place 
called "Labanon," and offered to his patrons of the two sexes 
choice tea, coffee, bottled mead, cakes, fruits and comfits. He 
praised his place as well adapted to those who came to visit the 
bettering place or hospital near by; and none, he assured his 
patrons, would be admitted on his premises but orderly, genteel 
and reputable people. 



I20 AMERICANS OF 1776 

humbly suppose has never before been seen in America." 
The tickets for concert or fireworks were to be sold 
separately. "Vivant rex et regina" was the loyal 
ejaculation with which the advertisement of this exhi- 
bition ended. 



X 

COLONIAL LITERATURE 

OUR Revolutionary ancestors were surely no 
great readers of books or newspapers. To the 
great majority among them came the necessity 
of daily toil;, while idlers devoted their chief time to 
their families or to out-of-door life and social pleasure. 
Our people seldom wore spectacles before they had 
passed their prime; their eyesight was well preserved, 
and they learned to master what befitted the immedi- 
ate pursuit in life and little more. An appetite for 
reading and self-improvement was here and there 
strong among the lowly born ; the comparatively few 
bred to leisure might add literary culture to their other 
accomplishments; but this was an age for developing 
rather the rudiments of civilization on a new soil and 
under new conditions, leaving the ripe fruitage to 
posterity. 

Yet books had here their friends, and a moderate 
amount of reading might be mastered from year to year. 
Circulating libraries — well-assorted volumes which 
neighbors might pass from hand to hand — scarcely ex- 
isted thus early in rural towns. The resident clergy or 
gentry might make themselves local benefactors by 
lending from their fairly stocked shelves ; and since the 
homes of our yeomanry had each its little cupboard pile 
of books, which gained accessions from time to time, 
like other family furniture, one's thirst for reading 



122 AMERICANS OF 1776 

went not wholly unquenched. And a fact now quite 
noticeable was the healthiness of our individual cul- 
ture — the vigorous digestive power that enabled the 
mind of this pioneer generation to stomach and assimi- 
late the dull and didactic in huge quantities, like their 
copious draughts of medicine. We read of learned men 
in these thirteen colonies; of apt classical scholars in 
Greek and Latin, especially among the clergy; but in 
modern belles-lettres the mental acquisition was not 
great, while the lighter mental range was neglected. 
Life was serious in these colonies. Reading and cul- 
ture sought immediate utility, the plodding needs of a 
present existence, or the pious concerns of the soul for 
a better life to come. 



Except for the rare newspaper or rarer magazine, 
the indigenous almanac, so indispensable, and occa- 
sional sermons or political addresses of immediate inter- 
est in pamphlet form, most reading matter for our 
colonists was shipped direct from London like other 
British manufactures. From the announcements of 
American booksellers like Henry Knox of Boston — a 
militia magnate soon to become famous in the Revolu- 
tionary fight and still later as Washington's first Secre- 
tary of War — or like John Mein, his Tory predecessor 
in the trade, who got hooted out of town for his politics, 
we see that at our so-called "London bookstore" were 
to be had imported books in divinity, history, law, 
physic and surgery, with "sea books" besides, and 
school books and Bibles of every variety. Ledgers, 
account books and all sorts of stationery were sold at 
these stores besides. 

The choice books of 1772-75, as listed, were Jona- 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 123 



than Edwards's Sermons, Witherspoon on the Gos- 
pels, Whitefield's Letters, "Domestic Medicine or 
the Family Physician," dissertations on the gout, 
essays on comets, treatises on the keeping of bees. 
Bishop Burnet's History, Pope's "Essay on Man," 
Dr. Priestley's "Experimental Philosophy," Dean 
Swift, and Clarendon's "History of the English Re- 
bellion." The patron with plethoric purse invested, not 
in fiction or humor so much as in Duhamel's Hus- 
bandry, Bailey's or Johnson's Standard Dictionary, or 
the Dictionary of Arts and Sciences; he chose from 
among ^ the various handy compends of the day in 
mathematics, grammar, classics and geography.^ 

A book in great demand among the women was "The 
Frugal Housewife and Complete Woman Cook," a 
London importation of 1772. Watts's psalms and 
hymns sold largely in America, as also did psalters and 
books of psalmody, spelling books and primers. Peren- 
nial among the last — in Eastern households at least — 
was the famous "New England Primer," a native 
product, whose Scriptural doggerel upon the alphabet 
is perhaps at this day the best remembered poetry of 
colonial times. 

Our common folk in those days were deeply con- 
cerned in religious problems. The great revival had 
swept the land not long before. A keen zest for theo- 
logical disputation and polemic pamphlets prevailed, 

^How useful to the young were some of these little com- 
pends — not all of them imported — Washington's example reminds 
us ; for the "Young Man's Companion," his vade mccum of early 
years, not only taught him writing, the drafting of deeds and 
the rudiments of his surveyor's profession, but instilled, be- 
sides, those precepts of good behavior which he transcribed 
for the regulation of his conduct in life. — P. L. Ford's "True 
George Washington." 



124 AMERICANS OF 1776 
< 

and sermons of the native clergy seem to have paid for 
the printing, and were read as well as listened to. The 
parade of some Scriptural text or Latin quotation upon 
its title-page gave piquancy to the contents of such a 
production. One clergyman announces "Sermons upon 
doctrinal subjects with practical improvements;" an- 
other "Sermons to the unregenerated ;" a third records 
"A surprising instance of Divine Grace in the con- 
version of a revenue officer." Among pamphlets well 
advertised were "Heaven upon Earth," "A Penitential 
Crisis," "Considerations Against Visiting on the Sab- 
bath," "The Whole Duty of Women," "The Religious 
Education of Daughters," "Serial Sermons for the 
Days of the Week," and twin discourses, one preached 
before and one after a noted execution. Controversial 
tracts on theology increased during the last years of our 
colonial era. Popery was freely assailed by our 
Protestant settlers as a foe who could not strike back ; 
and over the issue of establishing an English Episco- 
pacy in America arose a more equal discussion. "Pal- 
semon's Creed Examined" was a Boston pamphlet in 
1765, which maintained "the Protestant doctrines of 
covenant of works, covenant of grace and justification." 
Over the book counter were sold special expositions 
of 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, and of "the rational expli- 
cation of St. John's vision of the two beasts." One 
favorite book of the day was "Contemplations" on four 
subjects — the ocean, the harvest, sickness and the last 
judgment. "Death Realized" was the caption of a 
native poem in the form of a dying soliloquy, inspired, 
perhaps, by the ambitious verses of Pope. 



This was an age when literature, here as in the 



i 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 125 

mother country, partook considerably of the pompous 
and artificial in expression, like life and manners in 
good society. "English poetry," it has been said, "lost 
her eyes when Milton lost his;" nor had even the gentle 
Goldsmith, who preached rustic simplicity and the 
homely virtues, restored our Muse's vision. Pope, with 
his splendid diction, and a host of impecunious imi- 
tators, read Nature in her external aspects, as though 
from some back window in London's crowded dwell- 
ings. They guessed at landscape as garreteers who saw 
not. For prose dissertation, the learned Dr. Johnson 
had lately superadded ornament to the graces of Addi- 
son; so that the balancing of phrases and the search 
for the stately and sonorous harmed correspondingly 
the essence of sincere expression. With the growth 
of Oriental commerce had come, too, into passing literary 
vogue the pseudo-Eastern allegory, in which our con- 
crete English mind indulged in fanciful speculation, as 
Cassim, Ahmed, Mirza or Abbas Carascan — a familiar 
personage, ill disguised with turban, robe and light 
slippers. The age of morbid or romantic fiction, of 
voracious novel reading, was for America still remote, 
though sentimental studies of British social life and 
manners were not wanting. A popular book among 
those imported in the era of the Stamp Act was "The 
Vicar of Wakefield" — "supposed," as the bookseller ex- 
plained it, "to have been written by himself;" and be- 
sides Goldsmith's immortal tale, our people read to 
some extent Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe" or "Sir 
Charles Grandison," and with reservation the more 
humorous but coarser novels of Fielding and Smollett. 
Serious and sentimental stories were preferred at all 
events in our colonies to those of irreverent and immoral 
strain, and Milton, with his sublimity of religious inspi- 



126 AMERICANS OF 1776 

ration, was a poet more acceptable to our colonists than 
Shakespeare, the player. 

Moralists, like the poets and writers of fiction, seem 
hardly to have been separable from their creeds in re- 
ligion or politics ; and hence, while Burke was justly 
admired as the friend of America, Johnson repelled us 
by his dogmatic Toryism and his faithful devotion to 
the Church of England. Among solid historians, 
Josephus, Rollin, Robertson and Hume found Ameri- 
can readers. The works of all such writers were on 
sale at colonial bookstores. 



Native literature could not have flourished thus early 
under a colonial and dependent establishment. Yet the 
American mind, whithersoever its energies had been 
directed, was found ingenious, logical and acute. In 
personal religion, theology, interpretation of the Bible, 
the probable conditions of a future life, were grand 
themes of cogitation for our ancestors while politics 
were dull ; and among native preachers who were shep- 
herds of the people in those times, Jonathan Edwards, 
whose eyes closed on the world while Wolfe was con- 
tending for Canada, stands unrivalled. Defender of the 
doctrine of original sin, profound in fathoming the de- 
pravity of the human heart, to him the horrors of hell 
were as real as the joys of heaven, and sinners trembled 
at his utterances. Other New England clergymen 
there were, like the Mathers, who had earlier worked 
Biblical theology into schemes of temporal government ; 
who, while the mother country was preoccupied in civil 
war, devised the Mosaic dispensation of a common- 
wealth of God's own elect — Jewish as to the outside 
unconverted, but with remarkable assertion of indi- 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 127 

vidual liberty and equal rights among the predesti- 
nated. 



And now came civil oppression by the parent gov- 
ernment ; and resistance, revolution and political destiny 
became in men's minds the paramount theme of dis- 
cussion and meditation. The truths which underlie all 
human government were now explored — doctrines of 
civil liberty as against the divine right of kings, the 
individual as safeguarded from his rulers, man's in- 
herent right of expatriation, and the possible adaptation 
of institutions by new dwellers upon a new soil for their 
own welfare as against perpetual allegiance to Europe 
by the accident of human birth. What abler defence 
of the people's cause as opposed to blind monarchy than 
those addresses of Boston and the Massachusetts Gen- 
eral Court which Samuel Adams chiefly drafted? 
What nobler or more forcible eloquence, by patriot 
orators who differed in style and manner, than that of 
James Otis, John Adams and Patrick Henry, each of 
whom stirred deeply his special audience ? What better 
or more convincing masters of the pen for lucid ex- 
pression of a coming establishment for this continent 
than the sagacious Franklin, earliest among Americans 
born to stand before kings and to impress Europe by his 
writings and personal efforts in science, diplomacy and 
constructive politics? Or than Jefferson, the idealist, 
who addressed his sovereign as one fellow-mortal does 
another, and whose statement in the Declaration, of 
truths self-evident, has brought this Union back to first 
principles at more than one crisis of national peril ? Of 
him, with that admirable measure of enthusiasm which 
moves without leading astray, wrote James Russell 



128 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Lowell in 1858^: "Jefferson was the first American 
man ; and I doubt if we have produced a better thinker 
or writer." 

But of aesthetic interpretation or of tranquil literary- 
themes in song or story, America had little indeed to 
boast thus early. And when men rushed to mortal 
strife in battle, there could be little scope for poetry, 
unless lyrical in strain; nor of that was there much 
worth preserving. Native literati, such as had thus 
far deserved that title at all, were but imitators of their 
British contemporaries for the most part. Yet, as the 
late Professor Tyler has recorded, a large mass of 
native literature of one sort or another was produced 
here during the twenty eventful years which preceded 
the peace of 1783.^ Much of it was trite and common- 
place, most of it was argumentative or dealt with simple 
facts. There were travels into the wilderness, studies 
of the Indians, ponderous local histories of the colonies, 
among which Thomas Hutchinson's "History of Mas- 
sachusetts," in two volumes, deserves, perhaps, the pre- 
eminence — handicapped in fame though the author 
found himself by loyalty to the King. Even in sesthetic 
literature Yale and Princeton were fountains of inspira- 
tion. Princeton's bard was Philip Freneau, whose mis- 
fortune it became in later life to offend Washington, as 
a political press writer. John Trumbull and Timothy 
Dwight were the earliest bards of the Yale set. Trum- 
bull, Dwight and Freneau were all American born, and 
the two former were of Protestant ancestry. Trum- 
bull's distinction was that of political satirist ; and his 
"McFingal," immensely popular at the outbreak of our 
Revolution, was full freighted with the logic and humor 

^Scudder's Lowell, 218. 

"i Moses Coit Tyler's "Literary History of America," Vol. L, 
1-6, 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 129 

of this great uprising of the king's subjects. Of Fre- 
neau it should be said that if rebellious America had 
truly a lyrical interpreter, it was he. Though most of 
the poetry of our Revolution was too roughly wrought 
for permanency, Freneau's bears at times the stamp of 
real genius. Scott commended him to a later genera- 
tion of Britons; while both Scott and Campbell bor- 
rowed images from his verse for their own more famous 
poems. 

Among contemporary letter-writers and pamphlet- 
eers of this period indigenous to our soil, Washington 
and John Dickinson deserve mention; so, too, does 
Francis Hopkinson, a nimble poet and wit of the middle 
section, and a signer, withal, of our Declaration. Of 
aliens born, Hamilton impressed himself upon New 
York when Revolution opened. But the most famous 
pamphleteer of the times was Thomas Paine, who 
arrived from England in 1774; and his "Common 
Sense," which, more than any other appeal to public 
opinion through the press, brought these colonies to 
decide for independence, won conviction by sheer force 
of words and argument, for his tract was published 
anonymously. 

To go back, however, to more general symptoms 
of the age we are considering, American literature, 
while colonial conditions lasted, imitated with sub- 
servience the style then prevalent in the mother coun- 
try, which was sentimental and stilted. Elegance of 
phrase was affected for trivial thoughts, jewels not 
worth the setting; fine description, fine writing, 
was all the fashion. The pose and affectation of virtue, 
sentimental and vapid reflections, supposed to be sug- 
gested by scenes of nature viewed commonly at second- 



I30 AMERICANS OF 1776 

hand — these characterized the Hterary effusions of 
London magazines, which our colonial printer trans- 
ferred to his own columns to fill up vacant space and 
render homage to culture. Hence, in the years just 
preceding the wrath of solemn conflict, we see printed a 
variety of fugitive effusions, some originating abroad, 
others indigenous. Many of our votaries affected the 
lounger's dawdling essay to be gallant or satirical. One 
sends airily to the editor some ambling verse, with 
Horatian couplets for a text — "the result," he styles it, 
"of an idle hour." Another, as "Theodoslus" or "Cory- 
don," dedicates an amorous sonnet full of compliment, 
to some fair lady whose name is veiled in the vowels 
and yet discerned through the consonants. A fireside 
ode is addressed to "Dear Chloe." One fair poetaster 
composed verses which began "Genteel is my Damon ;" 
and a provincial newspaper, printing them in 1765 as 
the production of "a great lady," assured its readers 
that the poem "not only convinces of her extraordinary 
language, but also the greatness of her natural genius." 
Contributions of this cast, I imagine, were chiefly 
of the sect which adhered to King George after the 
struggle began and disappeared from America with the 
Loyalists. More earnest and passionate was the strain, 
though rude and robustious, of our Revolutionary versi- 
fiers. One poem of 1 775 described the military aspect 
after Bunker Hill. An Old- World ruin, whose un- 
happy picture was once familiar in American houses, 
supplied the parallel : 

"Palmyra's prospect with her tumbling walls. 

Yet far more dismal to the patriot's eye 
The drear remains of Charlestown's former show, 
Behind whose wall did hundred warriors die, 
And Britain's centre felt the fatal blow." 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 131 

Our patriot press of those years printed various fugi- 
tive poems in which passionate feeling for human 
rights struggles for adequate expression ; not to add the 
mechanism of acrostics on the names of George Wash- 
ington, John Hancock and other favorite sons of 
liberty/ 

Before the surge of political passion began thus with 
the Stamp Act, the theme for poetry which most stirred 
men's hearts here was religion, or, one might say, the 
moral and didactic. Among the imported books offered 
to the public in 1765 was "The Messiah," a poem whose 
author was held in esteem as "the Milton of Germany." 
And again we find "Providence," an allegorical epic 
in three books, by a clergyman, Mr. Ogilvie. "All the 
proofs of revealed religion are here epitomized," says 
the advertiser; "scenes of misery and distress incident 
to human life, drawn by the pen of so feeling a writer 
and heightened by the color of genius, will wring the 
throbbing breast with pangs of commiseration, will 
awaken all the finer movements of the soul, and improve 
the reader in the virtues of humanity." 

Of corresponding merit were those scattering prose 
productions which only the press of our colonial era 
preserves from oblivion. Besides effusive sentiments 
such as I have described, literary taste indulged in ele- 
gant rhapsodies over the phenomena of nature — a 
storm, a whirlwind, a waterfall, the reflection of the 
moon upon the tranquil lake, and so on. The vapid 
essayist was of the same mould as the vapid poet 

'As the British captors of our cities would get up dramas 
which ridiculed the American cause, so, in 1776, soon after the 
siege of Boston was raised, a patriot play described the various 
scenes that the town had witnessed; "alternately diverting, shock- 
ing or affecting." This was a tragi-comedy in five acts entitled 
"The Fall of British Tyranny, or American Liberty Triumphant." 



132 AMERICANS OF 1776 

of those days, appealing to the happy few of 
culture and leisure. Lucy, Lycidas, Philomath, were 
among the favorite pseudonyms of this fraternity. 
They touched upon gallantry, the education of women, 
and fashion's foibles; they described visits to Virginia's 
natural bridge, Niagara being scarcely yet accessible; 
they praised patronizingly the efforts of mechanics to 
found a debating society ; they criticised fastidiously the 
use of certain words or phrases in popular composition. 
One produced a brace of sentimental essays — "City 
Night Reflections" and "Country Night Reflections." 
"How sweet it is to be virtuous" was the theme of a 
pastoral paper of this sort in one of the magazines. I 
speak of times ten years before the fight at Lexington/ 



This we should remember: that Americans in those 
years had little capital, owned or borrowed, to bestow 
upon literary ventures such as sought remuneration. 
Hence, open proposals were made and subscriptions 
taken in advance as a prerequisite to almost any native 
publication which involved pecuniary risk or outlay. 
Even in London, during that early period, the book 
trade pursued such a course to a considerable extent. 
Literature fawned upon the rich and powerful, as its 
needs compelled it to do, and sought out patrons. In 
colonies whose inhabitants most inclined to reading and 
culture, booksellers would tempt the public with their 
proposals through the press for mere printing or re- 
printing; and thus was it with acceptable books of all 

*A panegyric appeared in the press to the memory of a highly 
respected professor at Harvard College ; "it evinces in the 
writer," remarks the printer admiringly, "a promising genius, 
laudable requirements in literature and the respect he had for 
the deceased." 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 133 

kinds from Josephus down to the latest controversial 
tract upon civil or religious liberty. A clergyman 
sought subscribers for his own occasional discourses. 
Publishers tickled artfully the vanity of desired 
patrons.^ In 1776 — that year when men's minds were 
set rather upon earthly conquest — proposals issued for 
young Timothy Dwight's "Conquest of Canaan," a 
native epic, to comprise nine books and 350 printed 
pages. Subscription agents were announced to solicit 
names in all the leading towns of New England and the 
Middle States, and all who subscribed for twelve copies 
would receive a thirteenth gratis. 

If the poet, the preacher or the controversialist 
sought thus the wherewithal for bringing his produc- 
tion to the light, readers, on their part, expected to pay 
for literary wares of every description. In politics as in 
religion, men bought the tracts that might enlighten 
them, and the pamphlet, sold broadcast, did more in 
those days to direct and mould men's thoughts than 
even the newspaper. Thus, of Paine's "Common 
Sense" — that famous tract to which I have alluded — 
not less than 120,000 copies were sold among the people 
within three months from the date of its issue. For 
political funds were not used in those days for sending 
out free documents to constituents; campaign com- 
mittees had not the public printer at their behest; nor 
did colleges, learned societies or even the bureaus of 
government dump their loads of printed erudition upon 
the public, that men might read and be influenced. 
That golden age when calendars, picture cards, time 

*In 1772, at Philadelphia, the miscellaneous poems of a deceased 
missionary were to be gathered into a volume, beautifully printed 
on fine American paper from elegant type ; the names of all 
advance subscribers to appear in type among the contents, while 
later purchasers would be added to the list in a second edition. 



134 AMERICANS OF 1776 

tables and blotting pads might be had gratis from the 
managers of a business enterprise was. still far in the 
future. 



While emulous bards and prose writers, Americans 
by birth and breeding, appealed with meagre result to 
the pride of a native literature, the "infant manu- 
facture," as our publishers styled it, of cheaply reprint- 
ing standard English books of one kind or another was 
better appreciated. The public liked good reading 
matter, good standard works, when obtainable at a re- 
duced cost, even though type and paper were poorer. 
Press proposals appeared in 1770 for "the first English 
Bible ever printed in America" — a long two-column 
announcement, phenomenal for those days of economy 
•in advertising. And from the Stamp-Act year onward, 
the public disposition to foster home industries rather 
than pay tribute to the mother country was a patriotic 
symptom to which book publishers, like others who 
made or sold in these colonies, catered for profit. And 
since lawyers in every age are the most liberal patrons 
of literature among men of moderate means — good read- 
ers and good political leaders alike — it would seem that 
the culmination of our colonial zeal in publishing was 
reached about 1773, by a reprint of the most famous 
of English law text-books. "Blackstone's splendid 
Commentaries," as the advertiser termed it, came out 
in an American edition, the prime venture of a daring 
Philadelphia publisher, backed by brethren of the craft 
in Boston and elsewhere. The British edition, which 
comprised four volumes, cost four dollars a volume; 
but for half that price, with a fifth volume added by 
way of index, for two dollars, our votary of the pro- 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 135 

fession might stock his shelves to good purpose and at 
the same time save money. "Sons of science in 
America" — for science in those days meant rarely the 
study of physical nature — were eloquently invoked to 
sustain this republication, whose promoter styled him- 
self in his prospectus as "an humble provider to the 
sentimentalist and handservant to the friends of liter- 
ature." "Those," he glowingly added, "who buy and 
thus economize will greatly contribute toward the ele- 
vation and enlivening of literary manufactures in 
America." 

Thus, with England's great commentator — peerless 
still among sound expounders in the language who have 
striven to make our common law readable, but whom 
Jefferson disliked with all his honeyed phrasing, as an 
apologist of monarchy and the whole status quo of 
British institutions ; unlike the sturdy Coke, whom he 
superseded — America may be said to have started, just 
before the Revolution, upon that high career of cheap 
and instructive reprinting and reproduction which 
under later conditions of an independent national sov- 
ereignty has had immense influence upon the literary 
education of our common people and the diffusion of 
popular knowledge, though doubtless in disregard of 
the just rights of authors. 



Not to speak yet of the magazines and newspapers 
of our colonial period, I may add that in this era, and, 
indeed, far beyond our Revolutionary age into the nine- 
teenth century, literary aspirants found place for their 
fugitive efforts in the published annuals of the times. 
Those morocco-bound volumes of contemporary taste 
and elegance which in succession long adorned, as gift 



136 AMERICANS OF 1776 

books from friends, the shrine of the darkened parlor, 
as some of us still remember — the "Token," the "Ama- 
ranth" or the "Wreath" of a designated year — brought 
out in print for the first time the verse, the sketch or 
short story of many a native author whose fame sur- 
vives his early poverty. The varied literary contents 
of such annuals were enhanced in attractiveness by all 
the pretentious embellishment of steel engraving, typog- 
raphy, presswork and fine binding that progress in the 
art of bookmaking could then permit. Perhaps, how- 
ever, at the date of our Revolution, that art, like Ameri- 
can literature itself, was more truly embodied in the 
plain and worldly-wise almanac, sage and homely of 
aspect, whose circulation was very great among our 
people as compared with most other books. 

As humble purveyor to the prevalent taste and 
culture, the useful service performed among the people 
by America's old-fashioned almanac should not be 
ignored or forgotten. What trustier vehicle for carry- 
ing to the home and fireside choice thoughts, choice 
maxims, sententious information, alike in household 
management and the higher philosophy of life? Even 
at our own day the almanac method of instilling ideas 
is employed, not for trade's reiteration alone, but so as 
to inculcate choice precepts from the world's best 
writers and thinkers in prose and poetry and from texts 
of Holy Writ. Since the art of printing was invented, 
no compend can have been more universal in circulation 
and use for recurring reference among grown-up folk 
who could read at all than the calendar — that annual 
chronicle of days and months set to appropriate figures, 
whereby we know at a glance the tides, the changes of 
sun and moon, the approach of birthdays and anni- 
versaries, sacred or secular, which concern us, that one 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 137 

may arrange his programme of personal life intelli- 
gently. If civilized man at the present day needs a 
watch or clock to regulate his daily routine, not less 
does he find some calendar indispensable for ready 
reference, to post himself upon the relation that one day 
bears to another, and adjust for the coming weeks and 
months his broader arrangements. 



But the popular almanac of our Revolutionary age 
and earlier printers was not like that of to-day, though 
quite as useful and popular in its generation, and far 
better adapted to lodging sound precepts in the mind. 
The ample card calendar, with figures arranged by 
squares, which shows the whole chart of the new year 
at a glance, and hangs before us in the living room at 
home, in the office, the workshop or the counting- 
house — donated by some advertiser who wishes his 
name kept constantly in sight, or purchased in the store 
at a nominal cost — this seems not to have been specially 
in vogue in colonial or Revolutionary times; but the 
almanac came out rather as a pamphlet or bound book — 
each month with its own page — and the farmer, the 
merchant, the mechanic — men and women generally at 
their homes — consulted the silent sybil by turning the 
monthly leaves in succession from January to Decem- 
ber; and they used blank pages for a diary. 

How easy, how natural, then, for so familiar a guide 
to embody sagacious hints for the house or farm along 
with his dry chronicle ; to make vague forecasts of the 
weather for special weeks and seasons; or. if more 
strenuous still in pleasing and improving the reader, 
to speak with sententious wisdom of the higher things 
of life; or in his lighter moods to make jests, tell anec- 



138 AMERICANS OF 1776 

dotes or drop into verse, and make himself entertain- 
ing. Franklin, as the world knows, gained literary 
renown with the pen for himself and his fellow- 
countrymen as an almanac-maker, and his success here 
was a solid one in pounds, shillings and pence, and not 
in fame alone. "Poor Richard" was the earliest charac- 
ter in the fiction of this New World to really attract 
the attention of the Old. While Shakespeare before 
him, and Scott much later, peopled the realm of liter- 
ature with new creations of the brain, it was our colonial 
Benjamin who first made of the imaginary sage of the 
calendar a living personage, as it seemed, in flesh and 
blood; and those pithy and admirable sayings which 
taught our colonists thrift, economy and the curbing of 
their baser appetites are still the seed-corn of homily 
and dissertation wherever the English tongue is spoken. 
Not, to be sure, the only personified chronicler of his 
times, he was beyond comparison the best and the broad- 
est of them all in philanthropy and sound philosophy, 
for his almanac man was himself. The success of his 
"Poor Richard" bred many an imitator in the years just 
preceding our Revolution.^ 

One surely observes, when exploring the remnants of 
that age, an increasing literary character in the almanac, 
but with literary assumption no greater than the con- 
stituency of those times could bear. Oi all the literary 
output of the press in any age, few works, after all, 
prove less ephemeral than those which delight or amuse 
the public for a whole calendar year. But as readers 
turn naturally to the almanac for casual purpose, and 

'Nathaniel Ames was before Franklin in the field as an 
almanac-maker who set forth wit and wisdom. Franklin origi- 
nated neither the newspaper nor the readable almanac, but he 
improved upon former methods. 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 139 

chiefly to ascertain or verify a simple fact, the man of 
genius who would fascinate and detain like the ancient 
mariner must take his chance among the vulgar and 
commonplace in such a world ; he has not that genteel 
introduction to culture and good society which in later 
years the choice annuals conferred, to which I have 
alluded. Of American almanacs in colonial years, lay- 
ing more or less claim to literary merit, there was a fair 
variety; for besides "Poor Richard's" might be found 
"Poor Will's" or "Father Abraham's;" while the 
Boston Almanac had already a good footing among 
rivals which it long survived. Annuals like these 
asserted their claims as literary vehicles, whose jog was 
midway between the shifting newspaper or magazine 
and those books, more expectant of fame, which keep 
up the procession indefinitely. To increase their circu- 
lation, country traders and shopkeepers bought large 
quantities, receiving a liberal discount ; so that the job- 
bing of popular books in a department store, which 
to-day makes such trouble for our retail booksellers, 
began before the Revolution, and with the rural general 
store. 

Of the choice and varied contents of these colonial 
chronicles we gather some conception by sampling the 
literary contents of those once popular publications as 
advertised in the colonial press. The Boston Almanac 
for 1772, besides its calendar record and "judgment of 
the weather," set forth stage distances of the chief 
towns on this continent, the civil list of the Massa- 
chusetts province, and the dates when the several courts 
held their sessions. Assuming, moreover, the easy 
function of household adviser, it set forth the correct 
treatment of gout, bruises and bunions, and showed 
how to build chimneys that would not smoke, and how 



140 AMERICANS OF 1776 

to dress the soil in order to get good crops. Among 
the anecdotes, veracious or otherwise, listed in its table 
of contents, was an account of Mahomet's extraordi- 
nary journey to heaven, and the tale of a bloody fight 
between a sailor and a large shark. For poetry or ex- 
hortation, it contained an ode to washing day, an 
epigram upon an old maid, and a warning to immoder- 
ate drinkers. A rival almanac of that year advertised 
an original epigram on the miseries of Job, the verse 
dialogue of a young spendthrift and an old miser, and 
an ode commemorating a lady whose death had been 
hastened by her anxiety over a lawsuit which involved 
the whole of her husband's fortune. Still another 
almanac in New England vaunted in 1773 among its 
miscellaneous contents "Timoclia, or the Power of 
Virtue," an heroic tale for ladies ; and for poetry "an 
excellent new song" entitled "Bo-Peep." 

Many were the sailor yarns in such publications 
wherein figured the shark or the mermaid. In Philadel- 
phia "Poor Will's Almanac" of 1769 set off its more pro- 
saic information by a short tale, "The Way of Happiness, 
or the Affecting Story of Constantine and Lysander." 
This ambitious annual for 1773 stole a march upon its 
more famous competitor for public favor by coming 
out as early as September 30, 1772, "Poor Richard" fol- 
lowing in October. And besides the usual chronicle 
of dates, the calculation of eclipses and tides, and other 
scientific matter, "Poor Will" brought together "vari- 
ous useful and entertaining essays" — such as a pre- 
scription for using asses' milk to cure consumption, a 
poem on the universe, together with receipts for making 
quince wine, and for the cure of worms in sheep, or of 
the swollen head in young turkeys. For nothing was 
too trivial to be set down in the printed menu of our 



I 



COLONIAL LITERATURE 141 

annuals. Another and later almanac preached to its 
readers a lay sermon from the text, "If thy right eye 
ojfifend thee, pluck it out." "Father Abraham's 
Almanac" for 1770 mingled essays on toleration, preju- 
dice and affection among recipes for raising turkeys 
and curing horses of the spavin. In short, the incon- 
gruous contents of these almanacs, designed for the 
appetite of the general, was recognized by both seller 
and buyer with the utmost frankness. 

When the call to arms rang through these colonies, 
our almanac publishers, with the rest, showed the mettle 
of Whig politics. Portraits of John Hancock, George 
Washington and other patriot leaders, original in the 
block or adapted, would appear in the annual issues, 
with appropriate lyrics or acrostics. One New England 
almanac for 1777 printed the prayer of Oliver Crom- 
well among its contents ; nor was this thought stirring 
enough to suit the age without a reprint of "the cele- 
brated speech of Galgacus to the North Britons," ex- 
horting his army to fight for their liberties. "This 
speech alone," argues the bookseller in a local press, ^ 
"breathes such a spirit of heroism and liberty that it 
ought to be read by every friend of his country, and is 
alone worth treble the price of the almanac." 

'I. C. 



XI 

THE COLONIAL PRESS 

BEFORE considering what we call newspapers, 
or the journalism proper, of our Revolutionary 
era, let us touch briefly upon the subject of 
magazines or periodicals of that date. I have already 
considered colonial literature in its general aspects, and 
one may readily infer that in any aesthetic sense the 
magazine product of our native press at that era was 
of very little worth. There were, to speak candidly, 
neither literary writers of merit and culture, on the one 
hand, nor patrons of means and leisure, on the other, 
to foster that sort of enterprise. The burden of print- 
ing must have been heavy enough for a publisher, with- 
out adding that of paying for the contributions sent in 
to him. In fact, the popular magazine of the present 
day, affording its wide variety of contents for readers 
of various taste, with sketch, short story, discourse, 
poem, and continuous novel thrown in together ; whose 
editors are accustomed to pay generously for writers 
well known to fame, and whose publishers seek, by the 
costly embellishment of art and a rich array of appe- 
tizing contributions on one theme or another of im- 
mediate interest, to attract a suitable constituency of 
subscribers at a suitable scale of prices — all this de- 
veloped only after the nineteenth century had well 
advanced and lavish outlay replaced a niggardly parsi- 
mony and economy. 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 143 

Nor do purchasers and subscribers alone in our day 
reimburse the immense cost to which conductors of 
periodicals are put in the inflated and extravagant years 
which open up this twentieth century; for advertising 
patronage and the co-operation of those who make 
newspapers and magazines alike subservient to build- 
ing up their own business fortunes figure largely in the 
income estimates of a magazine of the present age. 
Advertising was meagre enough by comparison a cen- 
tury or more ago, and the newspaper proper absorbed 
all there was of it. To any publication, indeed, that 
pretended to dignity and literary taste, such means of 
livelihood were abhorrent. 

Magazines and newspapers were clearly distinguish- 
able in those earlier times; but they grow more and 
more to resemble each other. For if some newspapers 
are issued weekly, so, too, are some magazines. Each 
sort of publication tends to absorb into its pages the 
literary output of the age by subsidizing popular 
writers and seeking to monopolize, as to readers, the 
whole time which our average man can fairly bestow. 
This was not so in colonial times. Yet culture was 
even then recognized as a duty by the fastidious, and 
sporadic efforts were made to foster in the community 
by means of periodicals the native love of letters. 

Literary magazines were brought forth in one or 
another of our chief towns in ambitious succession. 
They were mostly of the monthly order, and each gave 
up the ghost after a few full moons of feeble existence.^ 
America took her cue from the mother country; and 
in England the Gentleman's Magazine had been reared 

"Isaiah Thomas, himself a pioneer in that line of publication, 
gives some interesting statistics under this head in his "History 
of Printing," Vol. 2. 



144 AMERICANS OF 1776 

and confirmed in health while yet the colonies were 
loyal to their king. Conceived after such a type, six 
serials were set up in Philadelphia, one after another, 
and the same consecutive number in Boston ; but all fell 
immature, to perish by the wayside. In New Jersey 
a magazine of hardier endurance issued in 1758, under 
the auspices of a British provincial judge of versatile 
tastes and acquirements, who appears to have had not 
only a tenacious purpose, but, what was of equal con- 
sequence, a long purse besides. This periodical lived 
for twenty-seven months — much longer than the aver- 
age — and then paid the debt of nature with the rest, 
unable to meet Its other claims. "American Magazine" 
was a title so much in favor in literary ventures of this 
kind that were it not for Thomas's History the gene- 
alogy of those early productions would be difficult to 
trace.^ 



For journalism proper, however, or the newspaper 
press, with its more attractive mirror of passing life 
and its reiterated impulse to Immediate conduct, the 
prospect of successful circulation and influence in our 
society was stronger. And yet the colonial press was 

^That one which seems to have lived longest in our colonial 
era was Boston's American Magazine and Historical Chronicle, 
its publication lasting for the full and remarkable space of three 
years and four months. Perhaps, in a historical sense, the two 
most notable periodicals of this epoch were the two latest of the 
list, the Pennsylvania Magazine or American Monthly Museum, 
of 1775 (for which Thomas Paine wrote), and Isaiah Thomas's 
own ill-fated issue of 1774, the Royal American Magazine or 
Universal Repository, whose chief serial (in monthly instal- 
ments) was Governor Hutchinson's "History of New England." 
Double titles were at this time quite the fashion, and, like an 
ox or a dilemma, each literary bantling of the day bore two 
horns. 



i 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 145 

not thus early a strong force in America; and where 
it seemed impressive at all, that impressiveness was 
mostly confined to the constituency of a single province 
or of a provincial neighborhood. We may safely con- 
firm what others have already asserted/ that the pam- 
phlet In this primitive age had more powerful effect 
upon the popular mind than the newspaper. Perhaps 
the very fact that pamphlets sought their constituencies 
far and wide, free from local trammel, or from that 
recurring official presence whose familiarity may breed 
contempt, contributed to such a result. The immense 
continental circulation and influence of the pamphlet 
"Common Sense" is in point. For our people in those 
days read and spent money in purchasing whatever 
might interest them deeply at the moment and instigate 
immediate conduct, whether books or pamphlets ; while 
to weekly instructors, bearing this name or that, they 
were less susceptible and gave less heed. The news- 
paper, moreover, came to hand too infrequently in that 
age to be to British subjects either a constant mentor 
or a constant purveyor of tidings. Men took the 
printed news of the day much in the retrospect; they 
interchanged old numbers of the Gazette or the Chron- 
icle to read over at leisure ; and very many depended 
upon the chance of a stale perusal of journals which 
they cared not to purchase individually. The most 
stirring announcement of Revolutionary incidents — of 
a battle, of a measure passed in Congress or the British 
Parliament, of a public proclamation — came not so 
often by the newspaper as by some public messenger, 
speeding on horseback, by some special post or courier, 
or by some vessel just arrived from abroad, whose 
captain or passengers arrived primed with intelligence 
*I Tyler's "History of American Literature." 



146 AMERICANS OF 1776 

well stored during the tedious voyage. It was the 
private letter-sheet upon which a careful collector of 
news would rely, more than upon information direct 
from the press as then conducted. Neighbors picked 
up local information apart and then interchanged their 
intelligence. 

We at the present day, who take as matter of course 
the huge expenditure to which the chief newspaper con- 
ductors are daily put, in vigorous competition, so as to 
place before millions of readers in the aggregate the 
happenings of each day and hour in places near or 
remote — and this not by an army of wandering spies 
and reporters alone, with every possible facility to speed 
from point to point in person, but by local agents, posted 
all over the world, at whose instant service is placed the 
inland and ocean telegraph, with lightning speed for 
despatches — we, I say, cannot readily realize the far 
inferior and really humble facilities which the presses 
of our Revolutionary age possessed for disseminating 
their meagre information. With bulletin boards ex- 
posed daily before our eyes, whose headlines change 
from hour to hour, to give the epitome of each day's 
happenings ; with newsboys hastening to and fro, fore- 
noon and afternoon, eager to supply to each one who 
walks our streets the world's fresh tidings, in successive 
editions, for the smallest possible outlay in coin ; every- 
one, in our cities at least, tends to become the reader and 
sole owner of a sheet made up to please his particular 
palate, and ascertains for himself almost at a glance 
the latest news and the lesson to deduct from them. 
The very appetite thus created must be regularly grati- 
fied ; so that newspaper reading and getting the latest 
intelligence become a sort of daily dissipation, a craving 
at recurring hours, like the alcohol or morphine habit. 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 147 

Instantaneous photographs of what is passing here and 
at a distance merge into one another confusedly, like the 
successive scenes of a street camera or rapidly moving 
pictures on the retina of the eyeball. But from all 
such stimulants, such rush of impressions, our fore- 
fathers were remarkably free, as they must needs have 
been at that imperfect stage of the world's Inventive 
progress ; they might muddle their brains with rum or 
brandy, as many do even nowadays, but the delirium 
of the world's stereopticon sights did not afflict them. 
When news came, except those of their own immediate 
vicinity, they came in a huge mass, and time was need- 
ful to digest and assimilate or to cast up the conse- 
quences. 

Thus do we realize and appreciate why the pamphlet 
was the potent factor of our colonial age rather than the 
newspaper; a condition which has since been notably 
reversed. Yet native journalism found its sphere of 
usefulness even then. Such business brought together 
no vast capital in brains or money for developing influ- 
ence and gaining a circulation ; but humble, impecuni- 
ous men were its creators and conductors. It was 
carried on usually as a convenient adjunct to the book 
and job-printing trade ; hence the proprietor of a news- 
paper was commonly styled the "printer," and in the 
mechanical plant of his publication consisted the main 
outlay. This "printer," though he might rise by per- 
sonal merit above his rank as a craftsman, was a sort 
of impersonal potentate with the public ; and with rare 
exceptions the editorial skill bestowed upon these 
colonial newspapers was of the slightest. Editors, men 
of real intellect and capacity, who, using the "we," gave, 
nevertheless, a personal spice and flavor to the journals 
under their control, belong to the later epoch of 



148 AMERICANS OF 1776 

America's independence and union. Still less was fore- 
shadowed thus early the co-operative intellect and 
energy which nowadays and still later in point of time 
contrive to vaunt with business push the particular 
sheet — the Sun, the Herald and the like — as of itself, 
with its own ideal name and abstraction, a fit object 
for popular admiration, the editor ceasing once more 
to pose as a personality. 



In short, in those earlier times the printer of the 
newspaper made his profit, if he might, upon his me- 
chanical work, through the patronage of the public; 
while intellectual matter for his columns had to be made 
up after a scrambling fashion and gratuitously. In a 
literary sense, the press was fed by crumbs from the 
tables of its patrons and by fostering the ambition or 
vanity of such as might like to see themselves in print 
as contributors. Yet our deity of the machine was 
a public benefactor, in a sense, and deserved all 
such amateur assistance. When religious or political 
excitement was high, local leaders gifted with the pen 
would discuss in such columns the burning question of 
the day and harangue their fellow-citizens as from a 
rostrum. These were the real conductors of a press in 
colonial and Revolutionary times — a splendid, unpaid 
staff, moved by patriotic fervor or the ambition to gain 
substantial reward elsewhere. Their pseudonyms were 
various and chiefly classical — "Lucius," "Brutus," and 
the like, for they were largely collegians, bred to the 
bar. This condition prevailed as well with the press 
of the mother country, where, too, in that era the 
printer could little afford to engage talent for his news- 
paper at his individual cost. For the English-born 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 149 

statesman here or at home gave such influential service 
as a gift to his fellow-countrymen; while the printer 
ran his own sufficient risk of the suppression of his 
sheet or a criminal prosecution should government 
deem the matter seditious and apply the screws of the 
law. 

It was between 1766 and 1772 that the famous 
"Junius" letters appeared by pseudonym in a London 
press, and startled British society by their pungency, 
vehemence and intrepidity, not to add by the scathing 
ferocity with which they attacked men high in official 
station. And, with a like vindication of the public 
liberties as their motive, did John Adams, John Dickin- 
son and other colonists of America remonstrate some- 
what later against Parliament and the British ministry 
through the colonial press, with an authorship similarly 
veiled. Whether, indeed, it were by letters in the local 
press or by pamphlet, the anonymous character of the 
appeal was quite commonly preserved, for prudence or 
modesty's sake, or so as to follow the fashion, or, once 
more, in the belief that one's effectiveness would be 
greater if the reader had to guess who was addressing 
him. And this custom lasted in contributions to our 
press long after the Revolution, the younger school of 
statesmen, like Hamilton, Madison and John Quincy 
Adams, using freely the columns of a newspaper to im- 
part under one fictitious name or another their personal 
views upon passing politics.^ Though a few — a very 
few — newspaper printers and editors of those early 
times dropped their own seedcorn to fructify for Revo- 
lution in the public mind, like their anonymous con- 

^Recall, e.g., the Federalist newspaper letters of 1788. We 
know the names of the authors of that series ; but who asks 
the name of the newspaper in which they appeared? 



ISO AMERICANS OF 1776 

tributors, posterity has found little occasion to recall or 
honor them in the silent oratory of our human race. 
And this, too, while the printer's personal name was 
advertised at the head of the page and widely known, 
while these writers could be discovered in their true 
identity only through those who took pains to inquire. 
Even Benjamin Franklin — an exception to this as he 
was to most other conventional rules of his day — 
gained power and renown not so much by the press into 
which as owner he infused his own liberal ideas and 
methods as by his almanac, and still more from the 
public posts to which a prosperous and successful print- 
ing career transferred him. 

So, once again, in matters of social comment, in ani- 
madversion upon follies then fashionable, in censure or 
applause, it was the contributor who chiefly supplied 
matter for readers to ruminate upon. News came 
to the printer by the oral report of unpaid callers or 
through extracts submitted him for publication from 
their private correspondence; while such local intelli- 
gence as he might otherwise gain he collected in person 
without special assistance. While authenticity was con- 
scientiously sought, qualifying words would appear in 
the printed paragraph in case of doubt ; and informed, 
as the conductor often was, by those of the highest 
social standing, or by public men most qualified to know 
the inner trend of politics, the shield of impersonality 
was to all concerned the constant tegument of safety. 
Beyond this it should be said that our colonial news- 
papers made up their matter to a large extent by using 
the scissors and paste-pot. The latest London budget 
and extracts from London newspapers served to fill 
many a column of the week's issue ; while with so many 
presses of different provinces whose specialty was local 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 151 

information, our newspapers, like some species of fish, 
may be said to have lived upon one another. 

As with books, so with magazines and newspapers 
in that colonial age, we were prone to be imitators or 
purloiners from the mother country. And not to speak 
of English news matter, our native presses would trans- 
fer to their own vacant pages from the latest English 
newspaper a poem or sentimental essay whenever native 
happenings failed and the village versifier or Addison- 
ians, or the choice champions of political discussion with 
classical masks suspended their free effusion. 



Printed newspapers, so far as these thirteen colonies 
were concerned, came in with the eighteenth century; 
and the Boston Nezvs Letter of 1704 was the first real 
press of the kind that ever lived here actually after 
being born.^ "Every one is well born," says Dr. John- 
son, "who is born at all." Both in our own unde- 
veloped colonies and in the mother country the immedi- 
ate precursor of the printed newspaper was the "News 
Letter" itself in its primitive sense: in other words, 
a manuscript which was issued in form of a letter, 
multiplied in copies by the pen and posted in coffee 
houses or taverns where men were wont to resort for 
discourse and discussion. This manuscript, originally 
for shipping intelligence alone, added presently the 
items of leading local news and miscellaneous matter. 
The Boston News Letter had, in fact, been thus issued 
in a written form before its publisher sought to create 
a wider circulation by printing the sheet. Features of 

^Hudson's Journalism makes mention of Public Occurrences, 
a sheet which appeared in Boston in 1690, but was suppressed 
by authority as soon as it issued. 



152 AMERICANS OF 1776 

social gossip and criticism bloomed early in the 
eighteenth century into that series of printed essays — 
half pamphlet and half periodical — whose coffee-house 
fragrance diffused its most perfect aroma in the still 
famous Spectator. Manuscript newspapers were still 
put forth prior to and during the Revolution in parts 
of this country where the inducement for a printing 
outfit was wanting/ 

Our Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American newspaper, 
then, was not ushered into existence as a social or politi- 
cal organ, a formulator of public opinion, but rather — 
and so the word itself imports — as a disseminator of 
news ; though its potential influence as a corrector of 
politics or of social fashions soon followed. Hence we 
should not think it strange that in the earlier years of 
newspaper circulation men preferred for guidance in 
affairs their pulpit preachers, their orators, or those 
who in printed book or pamphlet put themselves frankly 
forward to discuss a pending problem without pro- 
fessing to be the general purveyor of information. 
Hence, too, the primitive posture of a newspaper printer 
in lending his columns occasionally to local readers and 
men of education who sought to influence opinion, 
rather than obtrude himself upon his own readers as a 
competent shepherd of the people. 

While in the age I am describing presses bore such 
names as the Spy, the Mercury, the Journal, the Post 
and the Chronicle, decidedly the favorite title was the 
Gazette. The Boston Gazette, dating from 1755, was 
a famous organ of the king's rebellious subjects in that 
town ; Ben Edes, its conductor, being a fearless patriot 

*See New Jersey Plain Dealer, whose manuscript was printed 
later as a literary curiosity. Of this volume the Boston 
Athens^m has a copy, which I have consulted. 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 153 

during the palmy days of his influence. The Pennsyl- 
vania Gaaette, Franklin's more even-paced and prosper- 
ous sheet, spread its widening influence through our 
middle colonies in the earlier days of peace and tran- 
quillity ; and its sagacious founder infused into it a wise 
progressiveness, studying how to make it useful and 
attractive in every direction. 

When the grand issue stirred native hearts, our patri- 
otic presses put forward some memorable devices. 
There was the famous wood-cut of the severed snake, 
with "join or die" for its prophetic motto. One Phila- 
delphia paper announced its own epitaph in 1765, when 
the Stamp Act was about to operate — "Died of a stamp 
in the vitals ;" but that act failing of operation, it rose 
to life again. When in 1776 the liberty bell rang out 
its proclamation in Philadelphia, the New England 
Chronicle of Boston changed promptly its name to the 
Independent Chronicle; its title-heading was embel- 
lished with the words "appeal to Heaven;" while the 
figure of a continental officer with drawn sword ap- 
peared on one side of the first page and a scroll "Inde- 
pendence" on the other. 

In colonial days the premises of the printer, whence 
issued his sheet, served as a sort of intelligence office 
and headquarters for such as might advertise in his 
paper or come to answer the wants. Servants and 
laborers in search of a situation, the respondent for 
things lost or found, met often here promiscuously ; and 
"apply to the printer" was the tail phrase of many a 
paid insertion in his columns, with more than a formal 
meaning. We read in one paper of 1772 that a lady 
had lost her "black double satin cardinal, almost new," 
which she suspects was "stolen by one of the various 
nurses wanting a situation whom she found at the house 



154 AMERICANS OF 1776 

of the printer when she called there to engage one for 
herself." 



Among the general news which our press afforded 
in those days were those relating to politics, announce- 
ments of local marriages or deaths, with a passing com- 
pliment or obituary tribute; the weather phenomena, 
shipping or business intelligence, gained chiefly from 
posters at the custom-house, and items of accident and 
sudden death, or of the conviction or punishment for 
crime. The Pennsylvania Gazette gave little, com- 
paratively, of local information, except for shipping 
news and the leading prices-current, though promoting 
various local reforms. Most items furnished to the 
public were set forth by the editor in sober earnest ; and 
the general tone of our press in colonial days was that 
of honest and downright sincerity, as from a publisher 
who honored the powers ordained of God and meant to 
keep clear of prosecution. London clippings yielded 
most of the jokes or rumors afloat in high society; a 
well-prepared pun, or perhaps some original poem, 
essay or private letter would enliven the more prosaic 
contents of the printed sheet. Contributors were com- 
monly in earnest themselves, save where they affected 
to be of learning superior to the mass and hit off social 
follies with conceit. Among the favorite names of 
the social or political contributor were Chronus, Tullius, 
Junius, Americanus, Civis, Fervidus, Lenitas, Can- 
didus, Probus and Publius ; and certainly it was not in 
good taste to publish a contribution over the writer's 
own signature. Most Latin names, phrases and quo- 
tations were printed quite accurately, indicating, per- 
haps, that the writer revised his own proof ; but where 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 155 

one of these classical contributors had started out in 
his essay with a Greek verse by way of text, the defer- 
ential conductor apologized publicly in his paper for 
omitting it, assigning the excellent excuse that he had 
no type on hand in that language. 

To the style of advertisement in the press of this 
early era I have alluded elsewhere.^ Advertising 
patronage even thus early constituted an important item 
in the printer's reckoning, whenever his balance sheet 
was made up. But advertising was not so very great 
or profitable, so far as the people were concerned ; and 
jobs from government were much sought after. For 
our merchants and business men were rather niggardly 
in expenditures of such a kind. Mixed advertisements 
might often be seen; and where a person had needful 
occasion to pay for newspaper space on one account, 
he used it on another. Thus one would insert an item 
of "lost" or "found," and within the space so occupied 
he managed to give the public a hint of his trade. A 
surveyor who offered for sale a manual on that special 
branch of practical knowledge solicited employment. 
A disconsolate widow, or even the personal friend who 
gave the usual probate notice as executor (of which 
most probably the estate bore the cost), announced a 
personal business conducted at the old stand or else- 
where. One offers his horse for sale, and adds in a 
postscript that some excellent snuff may be bought on 
his premises. For if printing space is paid for by the 
inch, the full area may as well be occupied profitably. 
In disputes matrimonial, I have alluded to a prevalent 
disposition, among New Englanders at least, to take 
their quarrels to the press, and try to enlist public opin- 
ion by way of a leverage. And so was it in many of 
*See pp. 20, 70-72. 



156 AMERICANS OF 1776 

the other disputes of ordinary life. In short, people 
tenacious of their own rights, and disposed to argu- 
ment, made through the press in those days a sort of 
referendum of their disputes, as though in town 
meeting; seeking to hurt an opponent, if nothing more,' 
by processes which might take the place of litigation, 
on the one hand, or the lawlessness, on the other, of a 
knock-down blow. 

As photographing primitive manners and customs, 
the press of this period affords, perhaps, in its advertise- 
ments, matter quite as apt and entertaining for histori- 
cal use as the so-called news which it more consciously 
supplied. And the same may be said of most other 
epochs in journalism; for the advertiser is one of our 
common people soliciting his own contemporaries and 
thinking how to make cleverly an immediate impression 
for his own profit. Hence he reveals the hum and 
hurry, the business intent and ingenuity, the working- 
day habit of his times with all the fidelity of a snap-shot 
from the camera. How houses and lands were sold 
or rented in the days of our Revolutionary ancestors; 
what chattels, goods and merchandise were chiefly in 
demand ; how the posts or the stages went and came ; 
how people dressed or looked, what they ate, drank or 
were disposed to seek for their domestic wants; what 
sort of things, lost and found, had been carried about 
the person — all this we discover in detail by the press 
advertisements of that age still preserved to us. We 
see, moreover, from the printed cards of those who 
furnished amusement or instruction, how programmes 
were made up, how deferentially the teacher or pur- 
veyor accosted his patrons, and how rarely, moreover, 
the great majority of our progenitors indulged in public 
sports or public indoor amusements. 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 157 

To attract wide attention by expensive advertising 
was not cultivated, other modes for gaining popular 
notice being in vogue. Hucksters with leathern lungs 
called out in the street the wares or provender they had 
to offer, while the town crier, with bell or horn to 
attract a crowd, went his daily rounds to make petty 
proclamation. Mercantile advertisements in our papers 
stood not seldom as cards from week to week, but the 
space of a single advertisement would rarely exceed 
three inches, and was usually much shorter. Patrons 
like these were often postponed for the sake of the 
general reader; and where the occasional load of 
European news bore with heavy pressure upon his four 
pages, the printer would omit standing advertisements 
from week to week, with a public apology for want of 
room, publicly assuring such customers that when news 
were dull and his columns became clear again they 
should have the most conspicuous part of the paper. 
A few conductors at our larger provincial centres, more 
worldly wise, met a crowded situation like this by issu- 
ing a half-sheet supplement, so as to afford more room 
for news and advertisements together; but such ex- 
travagance was rare. 

As to the adaptation of newspaper space to an ex- 
igency in colonial times, I may remark more generally 
that the postponement of local and domestic matter by 
reason of some important intelligence from Europe was 
by no means uncommon. For such a reason the printer 
would ask specially the indulgence of his readers for 
deferring to the next weekly issue an appeal for building 
a fort, or some contributor's letter, or, more accommo- 
dating, he would cut the one or the other, printing half 
in the present issue and postponing the residue to 
another week. One Philadelphia paper of 1769 divided 



158 AMERICANS OF 1776 

thus a poem on liberty, "to be concluded in our next." 
Newspaper readers of the day bore all such shifts with 
complacency, learning "to labor and to wait." On the 
other hand, whenever his usual supply of matter ran 
short, the printer felt no compunction at filling his 
vacant space with selected poems, essays and other liter- 
ary compost transferred boldly from the London 
periodicals. As elsewhere, the prosaic or matter-of- 
fact predominated in our press, aside from preaching. 
In a Pennsylvania Gazette of 1771 may be seen an ex- 
tract from Smollett's "Humphry Clinker," which, 
newly issued, was then creating quite a sensation in 
London circles ; but the products of imagination found 
seldom such recognition at that date.^ 



We may recall that the model provincial newspaper 
of Stamp Act times was in size only a folio, or four 
pages cparto, with two or possibly three columns to a 
page; that twelve inches by six was the average 
measurement ; that half of such space was the maximum 
for advertisements, and that the gift to subscribers of 
an extra supplement, printed as a single page or per- 
haps on both sides of an added sheet, was an outlay 
very rarely permissible. "Blanket sheets," enlarged 
so as to make the most of four pages, came much later 
into vogue, and that fashion has disappeared with our 
later disposition for less area and an increased number 
of pages. With the average limit of four modest-sized 
pages, then, the exact occupation of space must some- 
times have been perplexing, though fortunately for him- 

'Solid books, such as Robertson's "History of America," made 
the preferable padding when times were dull and the space 
unoccupied. 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 159 

self the printer or conductor of those early times had 
what in our day would be thought an ample leisure for 
putting his matter together. For newspapers in those 
times were issued only weekly, or, in rare and unpros- 
perous instances, semi-weekly. Not a single daily press 
had as yet been established in all America, and one 
experiment of a tri-weekly issue had been a notable 
failure.^ 

As for the price of our colonial newspapers at the 
dawn of Revolution, this, exclusive of postage or of 
the carrier's expressage, which might amount to con- 
siderable, was commonly reckoned at about 8s. a year 
($2) for weekly numbers. Of that subscription price, 
half was nominally payable in advance and the balance 
at the end of six months. In 1777, when the American 
currency was inflated, the cost of printing materials 
forced up the price of the newspaper considerably. 
Paper was to some extent a home industry, and native 
paper mills were started early, both in the Massachu- 
setts and Pennsylvania colonies. But the scarcity of 
rags became a serious hindrance to such manufacture 
in this country, and many were the expedients devised 
for procuring such household remnants by a house-to- 
house collection. Naturally enough, the journals of our 
remote and sparsely settled regions acquired a peculiarly 
dingy look when paper rated high in the market; and 
the straits in this respect became dire in all America 
whenever and wherever the pressure of Revolution was 
sorely felt. Our presses and metal type were largely 
imported from Great Britain ; and on the whole, colonial 

^It is related, however, that while New York was occupied by 
the British troops the several newspapers so arranged their re- 
spective days of publication that one or another would come 
out each day; and this was the acme of American journalistic 
enterprise in those times. — Hudson's Journalism. 



i6o AMERICANS OF 1776 

newspapers presented, from a mechanical point of view, 
a neat and creditable appearance. The proof-reading 
was careful ; and so punctilious were some establish- 
ments in this respect — for the printer as proprietor ap- 
peared ubiquitous — that we see sometimes the news- 
paper's latest issue stating the slight correction of some 
misprinted word contained in that of the previous week. 
Post-riders in those days carried newspapers to out- 
of-town subscribers, and such special delivery yielded 
to that class of public servants an important perquisite. 
Local newsboys seem to have been unknown, nor could 
the cash sales of single numbers on the street or over 
the counter have been greatly provided for. There was 
no shouting or hawking about of such weekly wares. 
It was regular subscribers, special donors and adver- 
tisers upon whom the paper really depended for sup- 
port; and the credit system of subscription, pursued in 
that day by printer and carrier alike, kept each anxious 
and impecunious. We see a newspaper printing its 
meek but urgent request that customers send their sub- 
scription money by the carrier "where they have owed 
for more than a year.'' Most humbly and pathetically 
does one of these printers set forth special reasons why 
the arrears due him ought to be settled — that he has 
many accounts of his own which are not yet discharged ; 
that he has been confined many months by sickness and 
by the death of his late partner, and hence has been 
prevented from collecting his dues.^ One Boston press 
in 1776 urges all indebted to the printer to pay up, 
inasmuch as he has suffered great loss by the blockade. 
Other excuses were piteously alleged for dunning the 
delinquent — that the printer has bought new types or a 
press, or that he plans improvements in his business. 
'M. G., 1767. 



THE COLONIAL PRESS i6i 

To such appeals the post-rider — who not seldom trav- 
elled with a special power of attorney from the printer, 
duly signed and acknowledged — would dolefully add a 
dun of his own. *'I cannot afford to serve customers 
longer unless they pay up arrears," complains one of 
these. Such appeals, appearing in the journal's own 
columns by way of advertising card, were couched, of 
course, in general and impersonal terms, giving no 
names to identify the parties delinquent. In the town 
or city of publication the printer himself, or the printer's 
devil, often made delivery of papers in person to the 
local subscribers. 

Subscribers, on their own part, we may opine, were 
many of them heedless of their own petty obligations in 
this respect. It is one thing for a man whose subscription 
is asked for a publication upon the deferred payment 
plan to put down his name with pomp or effusive compli- 
ment, but it is quite another to produce the cash prom- 
ised when the canvasser comes round. Influential men 
of that period, and, indeed, of times much later, were 
wont to look down contemptuously upon printers and 
editors and all of that plebeian craft who lived or sought 
to live by journalism. But the day for editors and 
moneyless or scurrilous press writers had hardly 
dawned upon America when Revolution broke out ; for 
hitherto the printer had done most of his own editing, 
such as it was. The press, however, as thus owned and 
conducted, was of undoubted service to the cause of 
independence. Printers in the several provinces or 
States were frequently urged by the Continental Con- 
gress to circulate its public appeals; and the patriotic 
among them did so with hearty sympathy. 

It was a familiar Delphic saying as far back as 1767 
that "the liberty of the press, when not abused, is of 



i62 AMERICANS OF 1776 

inestimable benefit." Yet the old common law of libel 
was quite severe ; and the only British safeguard of an 
outspoken and imprudent expression, however honest, 
against men in power lay in the submission of the case 
and its facts to a jury. The truth of the alleged libel 
could not be shown in mitigation or avoidance of dam- 
ages, for "the greater the truth, the greater the libel ;" 
and the point on which a verdict was to turn — could 
only a jury of twelve commoners divest themselves of 
their individual sympathies, which they did not — was 
whether the words themselves were of libellous import. 



Newspapers of every era aim to please their con- 
stituency of readers and pecuniary supporters; hence 
the prevalent taste of journalism during colonial times 
was to avoid criticism and bitter personalities and pay 
formal compliments. Certain set phrases were much 
employed in type when reporting local occasions of 
interest; and many such reports were doubtless con- 
tributed from the headquarters of those who took part 
in the event. The sermon at an ordination was likely to 
be "elegant and spirited;" a paragraph which an- 
nounced a wedding usually paid a passing tribute to the 
bride as "a lady of superior accomplishments;" while 
funerals and obituaries gave a peculiar opportunity for 
stock phrases of the elegiac kind, with pious application 
of the sad event for the good of the living. For the 
printer, like the preacher of those times, was prone to 
moralize upon the providential course of events which 
it became his duty to describe. 

To some of the small, rude wood cuts of our pro- 
vincial press I have made allusion.^ These went 
^Antc, p. 20. 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 163 

usually with advertisements, and served in a sense to 
classify or identify them for the reader's convenience. 
Thus a runaway servant was pictured with a bag on a 
staff, which he carried over his shoulder ; the horse thief 
was seen riding his stolen steed under a gallows tree, 
whose rope and noose dangled ominously above his 
head. A brig or schooner under full sail accompanied 
the shipping items of arrival or departure. The generic 
house "to let" or "for sale" stood between two sturdy 
trees of equal height with the roof. And this brings 
me to consider the general subject of fine art in America 
during our Revolutionary age, which may properly be 
postponed to another chapter. 



XII 

THE FINE ARTS 

THE fine arts do not flourish well on a pioneer 
soil, and America's advance in respect of 
painting and sculpture was not great in the 
days of our Revolutionary forefathers. Native talent 
sought all such instruction abroad, and much of the 
patronage, besides, that might afford the artist a living. 
Even for wood or copper-plate engraving we depended 
chiefly upon the mother country whenever choice speci- 
mens were sought. 

But Americans showed talent and ingenuity wherever 
their practical efforts were earnestly directed. The 
versatile Franklin shows us in his Autobiography that, 
after serving abroad in a London printing-office, he 
mastered the art of working in copper-plate sufficiently 
to strike off colonial bills of credit after a tolerable 
fashion. And Paul Revere produced geographical 
charts and rude pictures of Boston which to-day have 
an historical value. 

The ambition for illustration appeared in some of 
America's magazine projects, to which I have alluded; 
and coarser efforts bore fruit in the almanacs, their 
attractions in this respect being specially advertised, as 
well as the literary contents. Thus the Boston Almanac 
for 1774 announced, as specimens of art within its 
covers, besides its reading matter, "curious engrav- 
ings," so styled ; "the head of the son of a New Zealand 



THE FINE ARTS 165 

chief," with that of the chief himself, "tattooed after 
their custom;" to which were added the heads of 
George II. and George III. Other pictures which gave 
luscious temptation to the book were a war canoe of 
New Zealand engraved on copper and the anatomy of 
a man's body as governed by the twelve signs of the 
zodiac. Another almanac, two years earlier, boasted 
"the elegant head of the Right Honorable William Pitt, 
Earl of Chatham," together with the figure of "a 
wonderful man fish." A third almanac of the same 
period offered its readers, by way of appetizing illus- 
tration, "the famous wild beast in France which in the 
year 1765 destroyed upward of eighty persons." Still 
earlier, Boston's Almanac for 1768 displayed an "ele- 
gant cut" of the giants called Patagonians, lately dis- 
covered. 

Anthropology seems to have much occupied the 
learned men of Europe in those days, a new world 
with strange aborigines having opened its portals for 
discovery and development. The North American 
Indian, by this time tame, comparatively, and disposed 
to treaty negotiation, was taken about our leading towns 
of the pale-faced, to see the sights and incidentally place 
himself on exhibition. We are told of some copper- 
colored chiefs in New York City during our later colo- 
nial days, who visited the theatre and were much edified 
by the play of "Richard III. ;" and who, taken to one 
of the scientific lectures then popular, where artificial 
lightning was produced from an electrical machine, 
were moved to astonishment. In 1766 four Indian 
warriors with three squaws were conveyed across the 
seas to make a London tour. After an official call upon 
William Pitt, the premier, they attended an Assembly 
ball, which was opened by an English duke, and in the 



i66 AMERICANS OF 1776 

course of the evening entertained their courtly hosts 
by performing one of their own tribal dances upon the 
floor, with accompaniment of the war whoop and wild 
gesticulation. 



Most of our book engravings of this period were 
of very moderate merit; and wood cuts in particular 
were rude and coarse both in design and execution. 
Some eighteenth-century edition of the old New Eng- 
land primer, or an old copy of "Mother Goose," or the 
"Nursery Rhymes," once familiar to our young chil- 
dren and their caretakers, may serve to recall the style 
in vogue. The pictures were usually small ; and blocks 
once prepared underwent strange vicissitudes in the 
hands of penurious printers and publishers. When the 
fervor of Whig patriotism brought forward new candi- 
dates for continental fame and favor, it was not found 
difficult to reproduce some former likeness of the 
British monarch or his minister, with its indistinct, 
blurred and blotchy features, as that of a veritable 
Washington or "the Honorable John Hancock, Es- 
quire." I can myself recall an instance of the com- 
mercial shifts to which cheap wood-engraving blocks 
were formerly put in this country as late as 1850 or 
thereabouts in my native State. The Almanac had 
somewhat earlier printed in one of its annual issues 
little engravings designed to illustrate consecutive 
months of the calendar year, from January to Decem- 
ber; and these pictures reappeared in random numbers 
of a new temperance magazine, with a story or sug- 
gestive sketch written up for each one, to inculcate the 
lesson of total abstinence. 

More ambitious engravings were sometimes exposed 



THE FINE ARTS 167 

for native sale in our Revolutionary age, nor were they 
always imported from Europe, though such was usually 
the case. Besides plain steel or copper, the mezzotint 
process was at this time in much demand; and we see 
a native publisher issuing in 1775 his proposals for a 
mezzotint portrait of the great John Hancock, and 
testing the probable profit by canvassing subscriptions 
in advance. There were, of course, colonists of taste, 
affluence and social position who ordered costly paint- 
ings direct from London ; but for the general public, the 
dealer in mezzotint prints and engravings sold and ad- 
vertised them for household adornment, in company 
with maps, looking-glasses and picture-frames. A list 
advertised in 1772 by a fashionable importer and dealer 
in Philadelphia may suggest to us the style and subjects 
most favored at that date by prosperous commoners, 
in our middle colonies at least, for furnishing one's 
private house. Allegorical pictures figured largely in 
this list, such as "The Seasons," original after Rosalba; 
"Peace and Plenty," "finely colored and beautifully 
ornamented ;" "Flora." Scripture and heathen myth- 
ology contributed some erotic scenes : there was Joseph 
and Potiphar's wife, Venus attired by the Graces, the 
blinding of Cupid. This catalogue included also the 
letter woman, the oyster woman, the bathing beauty. 
Miss Yates (a famous actress of the day) in the char- 
acter of Electra, and a lady's maid soaping linen. 
Among pictures of more general mention were land- 
scapes, views of capital cities in the Old World, Scrip- 
tural pieces, sea pieces, sporting pieces, whale fisheries, 
floral sets of the twelve monthly flowers in beautiful 
frames, sets of nosegays, sets of baskets of flowers, 
and, finally, a series of engravings designed to exhibit 
the various passions of the human soul as expressed in 



i68 AMERICANS OF 1776 

the countenance. All of these, together with a variety 
lately imported of the most elegant engravings and 
mezzotints "by the greatest artists in Rorhe or London," 
were offered for sale at the dealer's new exhibition 
room in our Quaker city, besides numerous maps. 

Works of sculpture adorned to some extent, in 
late colonial times, the homes and gardens of the great 
and opulent ; and these in like manner were mostly im- 
ported. George Washington, soon after his wedding to 
the rich widow Custis, sent to London for some busts, 
through his business agent who resided there, and his 
personal taste inclined to images of conquerors and 
men of action in preference to all others. Those he 
selected were Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Fred- 
erick of Prussia, Marlborough, the Prince Eugene and 
Charles XIL of Sweden; and his letter to the agent 
specified the size wanted, which was to be after a certain 
precise measurement. "There u no busts" (sic) wrote 
the London dealer in reply ; none at all of Charles XIL, 
and as to the others, none of the size ordered. To make 
special models of the measurement sent would cost at 
least 4 guineas each. But he offered to supply images 
of the desired size from a long list of the world's great 
celebrities in philosophy and literature: from Homer, 
Virgil, Cicero, Plato or Aristotle among the ancients, 
or, among modern men of thought, such worthies as 
Spenser, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, 
Addison, Dryden, Locke and Newton. Washington 
seemed averse, however, to substituting such models for 
the heroes of his own fancy, and the business was 
dropped.^ 

On the whole, Americans of that age were utilitarian 
in their pursuits, displayed little real culture or taste 
*2 Wash. Writings (Ford ed.), 175. 



THE FINE ARTS 169 

in art, and appeared averse to spending a surplus 
upon delicate creations of the brush or chisel. The bald 
Protestantism of their religion, withal, kept them out 
of sympathy with those great masters of Continental 
Europe whose inspiration had come to them as sub- 
missive children of the Roman Catholic faith. For 
saints and Madonnas the Puritan of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, whether here or abroad, cherished an infinite con- 
tempt; and, in point of fact, Bostonians only a few 
years ago became casually aware of the coincidence that 
the battle of Bunker's Hill, whose recurring anniversary 
they had been celebrating for more than a century, was 
fought on the day of St. Botolph (the 17th of June), 
as specified in the old church calendar — that patron 
saint from whom English and the Massachusetts Boston 
had successively been named. ^ Even the heathen deities 
of Greece and Rome had then a far better show for 
adornment than the saints and martyrs whom Roman- 
ism had canonized ; for scholarship, at all events, rev- 
elled in the classics, and paganism gave us no offence. 



Now and here, as in all ages and areas of art, the 
chief interest of a patron was in having his own like- 
ness taken, and well-to-do Americans employed such 
artists as pleased them upon the portraits of their pro- 
lific families. Miniature painters came over from 
Europe and did good work on canvas or in ivory, which 
sons and daughters of the Revolution have preserved 
among heirlooms to this day. "Limner" was a favor- 
ite word among persons of fashion and affectation to 

*The new St. Botolph Club of that city undertook to make 
anniversary celebration of the day of its patron saint, and thus 
the coincidence was discovered. 



I70 AMERICANS OF 1776 

denote an artist who took people's likenesses; and we 
see a "limner" advertising himself in the local press as 
drawing faces in crayons for two guineas each, glass 
and frame included. 

But America had already given birth to two real 
artists of the brush, whose fame became broadly Euro- 
pean before they died. John Singleton Copley and Ben- 
jamin West belonged, the one to the Massachusetts 
province and Boston, the other to Pennsylvania and the 
suburbs of Philadelphia. West, though somewhat the 
younger of the two in years, was the earlier to achieve 
a reputation ; and when established in London, he 
aided his fellow-countrymen, Copley, to find a foot- 
ing there. Each forsook America to gain a European 
training for his art; and Revolution, instead of enlist- 
ing him for its cause, served to confirm him in residing 
abroad as a loyal British subject for the rest of his life. 
West rose to high influence among the English of his 
profession, and became president of the Royal Academy 
as successor to the great Sir Joshua Reynolds; while 
Copley reared upon British soil a family which gained 
lineal distinction in law and politics after his own death. 
West brought elevation of mind to his profession and 
sought for his brush grand subjects. Scriptural and 
historical, requiring a wide breadth of canvas. Him 
Byron lampooned as 

"... West, 
Europe's worst daub and England's best." 

But such detraction must have been due to the antip- 
athy which that errant poet felt toward one who was his 
opposite in morals and conventional attitude. West's 
lofty style of treatment is rarely emulated at the pres- 
ent day; but his "Death of Lord Chatham" and "Christ 



THE FINE ARTS 171 

healing the Sick" were long admired. A replica of the 
latter picture, which he gave to the Pennsylvania Hos- 
pital in 181 7, to be placed upon exhibition, long yielded 
that institution a handsome income. Copley's fame, on 
the other hand, was that essentially of a portrait painter, 
and the native press used often to refer to him as "our 
American limner." His portraits of the great person- 
ages of colonial and Revolutionary times, men and 
women in and about Massachusetts Bay, endeared him 
closely to the land he had left behind and kept posterity 
familiar with him. None of the choice minutiae of dress 
or feature escaped his artistic eye, and the rich rustling 
of silks and brocades seemed almost literally transferred 
to his canvas. 

There were other American painters of younger re- 
nown in this and the succeeding era of American inde- 
pendence and union, and some of them studied abroad 
as pupils of West. For Europe afforded the field for 
study and patronage to artists. The ingenious and 
versatile Charles W. Peale, a native of Maryland, 
painted at Mount Vernon, in 1772, that early portrait 
of Washington which shows him at three-fourths 
length in the colonial uniform of a regimental colonel. 
Gilbert Stuart of Rhode Island, after studying abroad, 
returned home to gain fame as a portrait painter long 
after the Revolution was over, and the favorite portrait 
of Washington's latest prime was by him. Washington 
Allston of South Carolina, who in the choice of sub- 
jects resembled West once more and lived abroad, was 
but a babe when the British invaded his native soil; 
while John Trumbull of Connecticut served as a young 
military officer of the Revolution before he went to 
London to study. Trumbull (who, by the way, must 
not be confused with the political poet, John Trumbull, 



172 AMERICANS OF 1776 

his contemporary, also of good Connecticut stock^) was 
ambitious to shine as a painter of historical subjects; 
and he alone of those I have mentioned seems to have 
followed the advice of Chastellux, to let the love of 
America's great worthies and the commemoration of 
the great battles and scenes in which American heroes 
had participated attract them to subjects worthy the 
gratitude of their countrymen. 

American sculptors belong to times still later ; and 
of these, Greenough and Crawford, perhaps the earliest 
in genuine repute among them, found their instruction 
in Continental Europe. Houdon, the French sculptor, 
visited the United States under the patronage of Frank- 
lin, and made the famous marble Washington which 
still adorns Virginia's State House at Richmond. In 
William Rush of Pennsylvania, a native-born of the 
eighteenth century, America had an excellent ship 
carver, but no more. 



Architecture, practical, prosaic and yet comprehensive 
among the fine arts, must in some rude form or another 
have engaged Americans thus early. Yet the best 
artistic talent of this profession, no less than the more 
finished products for building material, came from 
Europe; and there, at all events, was the place for an 
architect's liberal training. Many of our finer dwelling 
houses belong to the last years of the colonial period. 

So, too, in music, instructors or performers who made 
this art a source of livelihood in America were mostly 
of foreign importation during our colonial epoch. But 
of native amateur musicians there were some ; and 
Jefferson, to an extent that few readers of history 

^Ante, p. 128. 



THE FINE ARTS 173 

realize, partook when young of such diversions from 
his dry professional work in law and politics. The new 
"forte piano," so called, charmed him as a melodious 
invention ; and having ordered a clavichord from Phila- 
delphia as a gift, he wrote in June, 1771, to the dealer 
to send this other instrument in its place/ "Music," 
avows, in 1778, this author of the Declaration, "is the 
favorite passion of my soul ; but fortune has cast my 
lot in a country where the art is in a state of deplorable 
barbarism." Some of his servants were detailed as 
musicians while he was governor of Virginia, but his 
means, to his great regret, did not admit of a band for 
performances. Singular is it that men, the most illus- 
trious in achieving for their own age and posterity, have 
cherished dreams of indolence and fond seclusion in the 
midst of their immortal task, solacing their immediate 
labors by visions of the future illusory as a rainbow. 
Two things were in Jefferson's private thoughts in 
1775, soon after Bunker's Hill was fought: first, he 
wished a restitution from Great Britain of our just 
rights; next, to retire from the public stage and pass 
the rest of his days in domestic ease and tranquillity, 
banishing every desire of hearing what went on in the 
world.^ 

^I Jeflferson's Writings, 395. In this same letter he orders "a 
large umbrella with brass ribs, covered with green silk and 
neatly finished." 

^I Jefferson's Writings, 482. 



XIII 

PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 

PHILANTHROPY— a love of our fellow-men 
conjoined with the fervent wish to do them 
good — finds its most perfect fruition in this 
life under the benign influence of the Christian religion 
and the teachings of a Divine Master. The best- 
ordered schemes, moreover, of Christian benevolence 
and endeavor spring up in the hearts of a community 
who recognize the brotherhood of the whole human 
race and tend in their institutions to equality of con- 
dition, discouraging among themselves all arrogance 
of class privilege and distinction founded in pedigree 
or wealth, and, still more, that oppression of weaker 
races which feeds the pride and avarice of the 
stronger. 

Private munificence has worked out far more splen- 
did results in the United States during the last hundred 
years, under a voluntary system for relieving want and 
suffering, than ever rulers or the governing power alone 
could have accomplished through systems of tithe or 
taxation. Yet organized charity had not far advanced 
by the Revolutionary age, whether in public or private 
means of relief. The imperfect systems of the mother 
country were ours, but with a far narrower range of ap- 
plication; and progress was very slow toward com- 
bining States or colonies into united continental action. 
Charity for local or provincial objects seems to have 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 175 

been fitful and spasmodic rather than systematic. But 
when Boston was harassed by the port bill, in token of 
the king's displeasure, other towns in Massachusetts 
and the sister colonies hastened with spontaneous relief. 
It was less in money, however, that relief was fur- 
nished than in native produce. Contributions in July, 
1774, and thereabouts came in coastwise sailing vessels 
by way of Marblehead. Maryland set a good example; 
from Baltimore came 3000 bushels of Indian corn, 20 
barrels of rye and 21 barrels of bread; and from 
Annapolis, 1000 bushels of corn. Boston in town meet- 
ing gratefully acknowledged the noble sacrifice thus 
made of a remote sister colony's staple commodity. 
Among the local Massachusetts donations for Boston's 
sufferers was a yoke of oxen. 



Hospitals for the treatment of the sick and wounded 
appear to have been established in India, through the 
influence of Buddhist priests, even before the birth of 
Christ ; and it is alleged that ancient Greece and Rome 
supported like establishments. But such institutions 
the world over are mainly the offspring of Christianity, 
and in Christian countries seeking to apply to mankind 
the golden rule they take their amplest range. Such 
hospitals as European countries maintained in the 
eighteenth century gave general clinical treatment ; while 
special establishments for the eye and ear, for children, 
for women, for the insane, and the like, had as yet no 
distinctive footing. Nor were there hospitals of the 
dispensary order, where convalescents, or those not 
wholly confined to their beds, might expect relief and 
attention. And again, the hospital, like its counterpart, 
the almshouse, bestowed most of its work thus early 



176 AMERICANS OF 1776 

upon the poor and needy, or upon those, at least, who 
presented some distinctive claim for public support. At 
the present day we see a far greater and more com- 
passionate extension of such privileges; so that even 
the sick and suffering who are possessed of means seek 
lodgings upon such premises, for which they pay dur- 
ing the extremity of medical treatment or a surgical 
operation ; finding in the ample organization of a hos- 
pital staff — surgeons, physicians, nurses, attendants, 
with fit nourishment and due and constant vigilance — 
comforts and an appliance of skill far beyond 
what would be possible in their own homes at such a 
crisis. 

Two hospitals only, so far as I can discover, were 
fairly and fully established in these colonies prior to 
the Revolution. They were of the general character I 
have described ; one of them was in Philadelphia and the 
other in New York. It was fit that the earliest of such 
institutions should have been founded by Quaker 
benevolence and located in the city of brotherly love, 
foremost at that time in population. The Pennsylvania 
Hospital was organized just about the middle of the 
eighteenth century, though earlier efforts had been made 
to separate such work from the city almshouse, where 
medical treatment was bestowed upon the sick and in- 
jured. The name of Franklin appeared as clerk among 
this hospital's earliest list of officers; he drew up its 
rules, and served later for a brief space as president; 
but men locally eminent in the medical profession gave 
to that enterprise its strongest direction. The Penn- 
sylvania Assembly granted in 1750-51 its first £2000, 
on condition that a like sum should be raised by private 
contribution. Hence this important foundation was the 
joint product of public and private charity, and, as 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 177 

stated In 1755, when its foundation stone was laid, it 
owed its existence to "the bounty of government and of 
many private persons." 

The second of our native hospitals was founded in 
New York much later/ and known as the "New York 
Hospital." Its site, just "out of town" and on high 
ground, was judiciously chosen, and hence a good 
money endowment was secured. Comprehensive treat- 
ment was afforded at both the Philadelphia and New 
York hospitals before the Revolution; each ward had 
many beds; insanity was not yet specialized, and be- 
sides medical treatment in general diseases, contagious 
or otherwise, surgery was applied with such skill as the 
knowledge of the times permitted.^ 

Efforts — not very successful — were made in other 
American centres shortly before the Revolution to 
establish good hospitals. In 1772 a public hospital for 
idiots and Insane was founded by the General Assembly 
of Virginia at Williamsburg. At Boston, in 1765 or 
thereabouts, a town meeting publicly accepted a liberal 
donation of £600 under the will of that generous bene- 
factor, Thomas Hancock, toward erecting a hospital for 
the Insane ; but no such Institution appears to have been 
in successful operation until after the war. 

'In 1771. 

^The Pennsylvania Hospital, up to the outbreak of Revolution, 
was partially supported from charity boxes ; there were also 
irregular contributors, besides specific endowments by gift and 
legacy. Some revenue was derived from an exhibition of ana- 
tomical paintings and casts donated to the hospital. From the 
much later gift of Benjamin West {ante, p. 171) it is said that 
nearly $20,000 were realized in the aggregate, this picture being 
likewise placed on exhibition. A report for the year 1772 shows 
that 492 poor and diseased persons were treated here — among 
them 70 insane — and that 242, or nearly half, were discharged 
as cured. 



178 AMERICANS OF 1776 

In dealing with the infirm, shiftless and indigent of 
provincial inhabitants, such as require not hospital 
treatment so much as victuals and lodging, colonial 
methods copied those of the mother country, which 
were rude and repulsive enough. The lessening of 
pauperism, on the one hand, and judicious relief, on the 
other, of those who, from one cause or another, are 
found unable to support themselves or to gain assist- 
ance from relatives, becomes a burdensome problem 
for every age and community to consider and apply. 
The county poorhouse is not an inspiring theme for 
description, and they who come upon the public for 
support may always expect coarse fare and only the 
barest comforts in furniture and surroundings. 

Such, perhaps, is, on the whole, the better policy; 
discouraging beggary or public dependence, as a rule, 
by keeping it, in a sense, humiliating and comfortless. 
But the Pennsylvania colony set a notable example thus 
early in respect of her own paupers ; and in Philadelphia 
might be seen Quaker almshouses of a cosy cottage 
pattern, both unique and attractive, where the poor and 
dependent folk were lodged somewhat as in their own 
private homes. A home for every family was the ideal 
which this city, and Baltimore, too, strove to encourage, 
so that domestic privacy might be the boon of the poor- 
est and humblest of the community, and the noisome 
pest of the promiscuous tenement-house reduced as 
much as possible. 

Pauperism proves, however, a difficult problem to 
deal with practically; and out-of-door relief, such as 
specifically encourages the maintenance of family life 
among the miserable, has never yet worked safely clear 
of that other method, the public institution, where the 
dependent poor are congregated for systematic atten- 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 179 

tion to their wants. The best authorities of our own 
day argue that both methods should be applied together, 
according to the local conditions, especially in large 
communities; and furthermore, that the charity dis- 
pensed by public and private benevolence should be of 
an associated and co-operative kind. While secret and 
partial relief may in various and deserving instances 
enable our struggling fellow-creatures to maintain 
themselves in life, nature inclines mankind so readily to 
eat the bread of idleness when the way is smooth in 
that direction that the dread of public segregation and 
a public poorhouse proves a needful stimulant to family 
and individual exertion. Private charities were not 
greatly organized in America in our Revolutionary age ; 
nor had vagrancy and beggary any such strong footing 
among our people as in the Old World. The whole 
trend of our busy colonial life and independent civiliza- 
tion notably opposed such conditions. 

The English law in respect of private support applied 
largely to these thirteen colonies. Wherever a husband 
was capable of providing the necessaries of his wife and 
young children he was bound to do so, and his credit 
might be pledged for such support if he proved person- 
ally remiss in his duty as head of the house. The 
statute of Elizabeth, moreover, compelled adult chil- 
dren to support their dependent parents, and competent 
parents to support adult dependent children; it even 
required capable brothers and sisters to provide for each 
other in distress — to the extent, at all events, of keeping 
such a family from becoming a public charge. And 
thus were the English ties of family and consanguinity 
set toward the abhorrence of pauperism and public de- 
pendence, even where the safeguard of family pride or 
affection might be wanting. Among our primitive 



i8o AMERICANS OF 1776 

colonists, although organized charities were yet want- 
ing, townspeople combined for the special relief of some 
neighbor in distress, while the church congregation and 
its ministers aided the sick and suffering of the little 
flock. In Boston, quarterly charity meetings were held 
in Faneuil Hall, and the sermon was followed by a col- 
lection for the poor. There were regular overseers, 
chosen by the voters, and winter contributions of wood 
were distributed among the industrious poor. In Phil- 
adelphia, in 1772, following a charity sermon which 
was preached for the benefit of the prisoners and other 
distressed poor, the sum of £27 7s. 5d. was collected, 
and large contributions were added of victuals, bedding, 
wearing apparel, fuel and other supplies; all of which 
were sent to prisoners in the jails, many of whom were 
imprisoned debtors. 

While in Philadelphia the Friends early maintained 
almshouses for Quakers only, a public almshouse was 
established about 1730. The Philadelphia Almshouse 
of 1732 was probably the first one in this country, 
though others followed in Boston and other chief seats 
of population. Such houses developed, according to 
the public need, new or additional buildings and specific 
objects. The great increase of foreigners and penniless 
strangers with their families who were stranded by 
immigration, to linger where they arrived, made all this 
quite needful at our chief Atlantic seaports. In Phila- 
delphia, before 1740, sick emigrants arriving in Phila- 
delphia were placed in empty houses about the city, 
and medical treatment was provided for them at the 
city's expense. Sometimes diseases spread into the 
neighborhood in this way ; hence the erection of a pest- 
house in 1742 on a neighboring island. Philadelphia's 
poor rates were high; there were many vagrants in 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE i8i 

those days who lived by begging and steaHng; and 
tramps were lodged in the "house of employment" and 
made to work, whose expense of maintenance was large, 
besides the sums paid to out-pensioners. In Boston, as 
in other of our large towns or cities, schemes were 
devised for employing the poor, young or old of both 
sexes, rather than leaving them entirely dependent. 

It is interesting to note in every age the influence of 
heredity as inducing habits of shiftlessness and public 
dependence. In the workhouse of Marblehead, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1770, might be seen one great-grandmother, 
two grandmothers, three mothers, three daughters, two 
grandchildren and one great-grandchild — in all only 
four persons. 

How rough was the penal discipline of this age may 
be readily inferred from what I have said of runaway 
slaves and servants.^ His Majesty's jails and prisons, 
whether at home or in distant dominions, were houses 
of torment rather than of correction, for the aim of 
society was not to reform so much as to inflict punish- 
ment and retribution. Look at Hogarth's pictures of 
contemporary London life, where imprisoned women 
were set to work under the uplifted rod of the brutal 
taskmaster; where the vilest of men malefactors were 
herded with young transgressors; where the gallows- 
tree showed over the Thames its hanging skeleton; 
where the ride to Tyburn to be executed was in the 
presence of an unseemly mob; and where, too, the in- 
sane, failing of discriminating treatment, whether in 
the criminal or the innocent pauper class, raged about 
in bedlam like wild animals, the raving, the elated, the 

^Ante, p. 



i82 AMERICANS OF 1776 

harmless and the besotted ranging about together in 
adjacent rooms as though abandoned by the wholesale 
to a hopeless hell. 

The sanitary arrangements of British prisons in those 
days, at home or in the colonies, were vile, the cells 
unfit for decent habitation, and abuses were constantly 
invited in the abominable system of fees and perquisites 
to the jailers, whereby a prisoner's treatment and ac- 
commodation must have largely depended upon the 
money he might be able to command and bestow upon 
his keepers. It was not, in fact, until 1773 that John 
Howard, as high sheriff of Bedfordshire, began his 
systematic studies of prison reform, and entered upon 
that "circumnavigation of charity" which endeared him 
to after generations as the prisoners' friend. His first 
great work on the reformation of prisons was published 
in 1777, while these distant colonies were in desperate 
fight for their liberties. "He has visited all Europe," 
said Burke eloquently in 1780, "not to survey the 
sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples, 
. . . not to collect medals or to collate manuscripts, 
but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into 
the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of 
sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of 
misery, depression and contempt, to remember the for- 
gotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, 
and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in 
all countries." 

Repression and retribution were the penal objects 
proposed in those days; not reformation. Some have 
observed further that the jail or prison-house down 
nearly to the nineteenth century was largely for deten- 
tion in those days, preparatory to one's trial or the inflic- 
^2 Burke's Works, 387. 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 183 

tion of some more positive punishment ; that imprison- 
ment for a specific term, as such, was not customary. 
And indeed, when we reflect how many of the lesser 
crimes, such as burglary, horse stealing, forgery and 
counterfeiting, were punished by the death infliction — 
and not murder, manslaughter, treason or highway 
robbery alone — a prison must have been to many of the 
law's victims but the half-way house to extreme torture. 
Then for a minor summary discipline stood the stocks, 
the pillory and the whipping-post. Banishment to these 
and other British colonies was still another final ex- 
piation for crimes in the mother country. Yet punish- 
ment by a long and lingering confinement within prison 
walls, as in itself a means of wreaking arbitrary ven- 
geance or of putting a victim conveniently out of one's 
way, has well been understood in all ages of mankind ; 
as France's bastille, the Tower of London and the dun- 
geons of mediaeval castles testify. Prisoners of war 
and of state might thus be held for ransom, or for some 
other ulterior advantage to those who held them in 
stealthy confinement. Even imprisonment for debt had 
largely for its object a private creditor's revenge, in 
expectation that the friends and family of the unfortu- 
nate one might be rallied in distress to get him released 
at their own impoverishment. 

Our British colonists, especially in their sparser 
settlements, treated public wards after a promiscuous 
fashion, as the limited means and knowledge of the 
times suggested; and public institutions, such as they 
were, gave little opportunity for the public to separate 
criminals from the pauper objects of charity — the sick 
and the simply dependent. Almshouses and prisons in 
so primitive a condition were of local necessity com- 
bined or contiguous dwellings. In our more populous 



i84 AMERICANS OF 1776 

towns might be seen a Bridewell for the detention and 
confinement of the disorderly ; a workhouse where the 
shiftless and vagrant, when able-bodied, were set to 
doing something to earn a support; while the alms- 
house, near by or under the same roof, received con- 
firmed and helpless paupers, with only a reluctant sepa- 
ration of the insane after such public quarters became 
overcrowded. Filth or bad ventilation was a frequent 
complaint; but until a later age reform came slowly 
enough; for the better class of society, avoiding such 
purlieus, confided in the selectmen or overseers, and 
desired to be somewhat in ignorance of what went on 
there. The pound for stray animals was a place of con- 
venient detention for the brute creation; and so, too, 
his Majesty's jails themselves were largely in demand 
for the apprehension and detention of slaves and in- 
dentured servants of whatever color, those human chat- 
tels and runaways with a price set upon them. 

The Quaker spirit, observes our historian Fiske, was 
admirable in dealing with pauperism and crime in this 
colonial age, though the ideal of Pennsylvania could not 
yet be realized for confining the death penalty to murder 
and treason.^ This commonwealth, I may add, after 
freedom and continental union had become secure, led 
America, and one might say the world, in new schemes 
for making the prison a place not of punishment only, 
but of reformation. 



It has been remarked — and truthfully, too — that the 
diseases of a people are modified from generation to 
generation by their changing habits of life. To-day the 
extreme tension of living produces brain and nervous 

^Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 326. 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 185 

disorders; but it was not so in our Revolutionary era, 
when out-of-door pursuits modified of necessity the 
monotony of intellectual labor, and few found the 
mental strain incessant, whether in business or social 
occupation. Life in the free open air brings cheerfulness, 
and where families are large one seldom gets lonely. 
The chief casualties in colonial America were those of 
undue physical exposure or imprudent regimen ; added 
to which were such epidemics as smallpox or yellow 
fever, which failed of skilful personal treatment or 
spread their germs of contagion for want of sanitary 
measures of general precaution. Large families were 
gathered in a home; but the home life itself was 
chiefly in the country, or, at least, where dwelling 
houses were built quite apart. Such farmer's chores, 
as plowing, reaping and woodcutting, may well supply 
a bodily substitute for the gymnasium ; distant vacation 
trips, inland or over the seas, are not needful to those 
who walk, ride, row or sail about their wild domains 
in the ordinary discipline of life; nor are costly out-of- 
door sports needful, like polo, golf or tennis, where the 
constant daily routine is that of physical exertion. 

In this earlier age, however, people who dwelt remote 
from large towns suffered for want of skilled surgeons 
or physicians in a sudden emergency. Their whole- 
some life in the open air, with its robust pursuit of in- 
dustry, did much to keep them in normal good health ; 
and these ancestors of ours were indeed a tough and 
hardy race of men and women. But when casualty 
came, or a severe illness, death followed all too surely, 
because of ignorant treatment in such a case, or of no 
treatment at all. It was not until 1760, writes the 
learned Dr. Ramsay,^ that the Carollnas undertook to 
*2 Ramsay's South Carolina. 



i86 AMERICANS OF 1776 

settle doctors of medicine in their midst, or even to raise 
them ; but by that time a medical school was set up at 
Philadelphia, such had become the stress of the situa- 
tion, and young men of our colonies began going there 
to learn the rudiments of the healing art. 

Impudent quackery imposed, meanwhile, upon the 
simple and credulous of our common people, as it doubt- 
less will to the end of time. One travelling aurist and 
oculist is seen puffing through the colonial press his 
arrival in a Northern town ; and his manifesto parades 
a learned quotation from Cicero, a rhapsody upon the 
blessings of sight and hearing vouchsafed mankind by 
Almighty God, and a pompous list of the various dis- 
orders he comes prepared to cure. It was common for 
these self-trumpeted itinerants to proclaim "no cure, 
no pay;" or, in proof of moderation and philanthropy, 
to offer treatment gratis to the poor at certain hours 
of each day. Mr. Watson,^ the annalist of Philadelphia, 
mentions an empiric in that city who advertised in those 
days as a bleeder, tooth drawer and horse doctor ; and he 
further relates that in 1732 there arose much excite- 
ment among the fashionable of that city over a self- 
styled M.D. who professed to cure toothache by ex- 
tracting a worm from the tooth. 

Surgery in our colonies fared even harder than the 
art of medicine, and mechanics were seen applying the 
rude implements of their humble craft to relieve the 
bodily agony of some neighbor. American Ingenuity, 
however, rose often to such occasions where no pro- 
fessional skill could be had. Dr. Ramsay himself saw 
in his day a South Carolinian whose leg, when badly 

^Watson's Philadelphia. 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 187 

crushed, had been amputated some ten years before by 
an uneducated friend with a common knife, a carpen- 
ter's hand-saw, and tongs heated red hot to staunch the 
bleeding; for no surgeon dwelt at that time within sixty 
miles of the sufferer. At continental centres like 
Boston, New York and Philadelphia lived good sur- 
geons and even specialists in surgery, some of whom 
performed operations of a delicate and difficult nature 
with high success. Such men, like the best of our 
physicians in America down to the Revolution, had for 
the most part studied their profession abroad. But how 
could the skilled operator deal with distant patients, 
dangerously disabled, when travelling was so slow and 
difficult? Nor in these days was there ether or other 
anaesthetic application for assuaging pain. No wonder, 
then, that in so many of the individual accidents of 
which we read in the colonial papers speedy death or 
a horrible maiming for life was the victim's accepted 
fate. The present worth, too, of a particular life had 
closely to be considered; and the young children of a 
prolific family who swallowed pins or ate poisonous 
berries were pretty sure to die in consequence, while the 
superannuated bore his fate as a martyr. 

Medical practice, furthermore, in this early age erred 
much against nature, even when applied with all the 
skill that experience and the schools could muster. 
Upon a medical theory, since discarded, that morborific 
matter should be expelled from the blood as the primal 
cause of disease, the sick patient was closely confined 
to his room to sweat out his disorder, with the windows 
and doors closed tight and all fresh air excluded. 
Medicines, too, were administered in excessive quanti- 
ties with that same end in view. There were purges, 
vomits and other sweating medicines ; and besides such 



i88 AMERICANS OF 1776 

remedies, cupping, bleeding and blistering were exter- 
nally applied with little sense of discrimination. For 
chills, pleurisy and rheumatism, the lancet was freely 
used ; and Washington himself, there is good reason to 
believe, perished as the century closed rather from this 
weapon in the hands of his indiscreet physicians at 
Mount Vernon than from the cold he had caught, which 
brought them to his bedside. 

Among favorite medicines of our Revolutionary age 
were ipecac, mercury, opium, bark and wine. People 
dosed themselves freely for their own ailments, and 
among favorite specifics of the day were pills, drops 
and balsams with appropriate trademarks. Pokeweed 
was used as a cure for the cancer. Apothecaries sold 
both native and imported compounds, and rhubarb was 
so much in popular demand for medicine that grocers 
as well as druggists supplied it over their counters. 
Currents of cold air under the door and through chinks 
and window-sashes in the wintry weather, before the 
days of air-tight stoves, furnaces and steam pipes to 
take off the chill of our sleeping rooms, may have con- 
siderably offset the stifling effect of those pent-up 
chambers and curtained beds wherein our ancestors 
sought repose, strongly prejudiced as they were against 
fresh air and ventilation as a safeguard of health. And 
a more plentiful use of pure water, externally and in- 
ternally, might doubtless have checked or prevented 
many diseases which gained headway among them, had 
aids to health so simple been popular in those days. 
The hygiene of clothing, with frequent change of 
apparel, we understand much better to-day than did 
the average colonist, who usually dressed for the day 
when he dressed for breakfast. Flannel is now the ap- 
propriate underwear, as it was not in those days; the 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 189 

fair sex have discarded whalebone stays and tight 
lacing, while swaddling bands for infants have ceased 
to be in vogue. 

Among diseases familiarly recited in those days were 
the king's evil, running evil, dropsy, bilious cholic, 
cramps, rheumatism, bleeding of the nose and sore 
eyes.^ Some eye disorders came from the flying grains 
of wheat where farming was carried on after the usual 
plain and toilsome fashion. A distemper once afflicted 
the eastern shore of Maryland known as "jail fever," 
which was said to have been brought over by prisoners 
on board a convict ship ; but under a strict quarantine 
it presently disappeared. Yellow fever did deadly 
havoc in Philadelphia in 1749, as it did in years much 
later. Malignant fevers in our towns and cities, where 
the population lived comparatively close together, might 
often have been traceable to imperfect sanitation. 

Smallpox was a scourge of our thirteen provinces, 
perhaps the most fearful of all in contagious spread, 
and frequent allusion was made to its ravages in the 
press of these late colonial times. Slaves and bond- 
servants, in fact, were held at a stated premium who 
had safely gone through that distemper ; while many a 
runaway was published for identification by its dis- 
figuring scars. Philadelphia had a smallpox epidemic 
in 1 73 1 ; Harvard omitted its commencement exercises 
some thirty years later because of a like disorder which 
spread at Cambridge. We were as yet far from Dr. 
Jenner and the precaution of modern vaccination; but 
some preventives of the malady were in special vogue. 

^In one of Franklin's letters, in 1773, will be found some useful 
hints about taking cold. This disorder, he writes, which is ex- 
pressed in English and no other language, prevails probably 
only among the civilized. 



190 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Inoctilators in those days loaded their patients with 
mercury, tortured them with cruel incisions for forcing 
in extraneous matter, and finally nailed blankets over 
the fast-closed windows to exclude fresh air from them 
altogether.^ About the time of Boston's troubles with 
the king, smallpox hospitals were set up in Massa- 
chusetts, and the selectmen of various towns sought 
to treat the disease more intelligently than before. At 
one of these establishments bedding was so scarce In 
1776 that patients were asked to bring with them their 
own supply and claim a corresponding reduction from 
their board. So greatly, indeed, had our patriot army 
in that vicinity suffered from the scourge when revolt 
became Revolution that British officers were charged 
with spreading it purposely — a false report, we may 
well presume. So when Boston was at last relieved 
from siege and the redcoats sailed away, its selectmen 
dispatched all smallpox patients into the country, as 
the provincial legislature had directed ; and in the pro- 
gramme arranged for Washington's triumphant entry 
into the town only councillors "who had had the small- 
pox" were allowed to appear in the procession.^ 



Travelling in colonial times was too costly, too slow 
and too difficult for one to really gain the change and 
variety of scene and climate that at the present day is 
prescribed so largely to induce convalescence. One 
might, to be sure, tramp into the backwoods, camp out, 
fish, shoot and inhale the balsams of the pine forests; 
but such trips were rather for the hardy and vigorous, 
and they had their attendant dangers. The youth in 

'2 Ramsay's South Carolina. 
'M. G., 1777. 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 191 

feeble health took, sometimes, his special voyage in a 
merchant vessel to the Barbadoes or some other tropical 
port; but little comfort could be had in such water craft, 
and unless nature supplied a new tonic, one might be 
worse for the long, listless and tedious exposure. As 
our inland settlements progressed, however, "mineral 
springs'' were occasionally found, whose medicinal 
waters were sought by the fashionable after British 
precedent, for health, and, haply, some dawdling social 
delights. Chalybeate waters were already sold to some 
extent In the suburbs of our Quaker metropolis; and 
Philadelphians, it is said, were greatly stirred in 1773 
over the accidental discovery of a so-called mineral 
spring, whose bitter virtues, hailed readily as medicinal, 
proved owing to the nauseous remnants of a sunken pit. 
New Englanders about 1767 took eager interest in 
proclaiming their new mineral spring, opened in Staf- 
ford, Connecticut; while almost simultaneously was 
announced from the New York province another heal- 
ing fountain whose waters gushed somewhere between 
Kinderhook and Albany. The more remote New York 
spa of famous Balston, and its still more famous rival, 
Saratoga, had yet a renown to gain; but for two or 
three years preceding 1 770 Stafford Springs were per- 
haps the most renowned for their healing properties in 
all our northern colonies. The same potency was 
claimed for those waters as at Tunbridge and the other 
famous resorts of the mother country; they had an 
astringent taste, and upon analysis were found im- 
pregnated with iron and sulphur in fit proportions. All 
bodily disorders to which tlesh was heir might be cured 
or alleviated by copious draughts at this healing source. 
Eminent physicians journeyed specially to Stafford in 
consequence to taste, analyze and pronounce expert 



192 AMERICANS OF 1776 

opinion. In May, 1767, a stage-coach and wagon set 
out from Boston for this halcyon resort, its passengers 
paying five dollars each to be carried through. Doctors 
gave grave caution through the press that the waters 
should be judiciously imbibed under strictly profes- 
sional direction. While public excitement was at its 
height, a shrewd citizen, it is related, who had been 
hired to fetch some of this God-given water for the 
relief of his sick townspeople in Connecticut, retailed 
the transparent fluid at a dollar a gallon to such travel- 
lers as he chanced to meet on his journey, and then 
refilled his cask at a babbling wayside brook, whose 
water was eagerly drunk by his patrons at home, who 
knew nothing of the substitution; and it did them a 
great deal of good. 

In 1769, at Bristol, near Philadelphia, was built a 
large bath-house over a local chalybeate spring, whose 
waters had been duly recommended for invalids by the 
Philosophical Society of Pennsylvania. And in 1772 
we see a sort of sanitarium advertised, situate at the 
end of a pier in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, whose 
aggregation of luxuries combined to invigorate the 
weak and weary. These consisted, as its manager 
specifically explained, in a room for dress and undress 
and a staircase which led down into a bathing room 
accessible to the ocean, so that those who wished might 
run off into deep water; while, furthermore, only two 
miles away was a mineral spring on the pattern of the 
German spa. whither one might walk for a healing 
drink after taking (and of course paying for) his re- 
freshing bath. 

The warm springs of Virginia were not unknown at 
this early period. Washington visited one of them for 
his health in August, 1761, and found there a gathering 



PHILANTHROPY AND DISEASE 193 

of about two hundred people, full of all manner of 
diseases and complaints. The journey thither was a 
hard one, through a rugged mountainous country, with 
trees fallen across the road, which for the final twenty 
miles was almost impassable for carriages. The place 
was well supplied at that time with meat and pro- 
visions; but visitors had to provide their own rude 
lodgings, and Washington's party lived in a tent pro- 
cured at Winchester. The gain he received from the 
healing waters was largely neutralized by the fatigue 
of his journey and the weather. Located on the east 
declivity of a steep mountain, and enclosed by hills on 
all sides, one lost here the rays of the late afternoon 
sun.^ Washington at that date, and about two years 
after his marriage, came very near his death gasp, as he 
wrote his friends, but was presently on the road to 
recovery. Had he passed away, how sadly different 
might have been our country's record for the last 
twenty-five years of that critical century, 

^2 Washington's Writings, i8o. 



XIV 

COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 

IT has long been a cardinal maxim in America — and 
posterity should cherish and proclaim the fact — 
that education of the whole people is the funda- 
mental condition of our civil progress, the palladium of 
our liberties. Knowledge of the truth that makes free 
promotes in any commonwealth or nation the practice 
and discipline of freedom. Coeval, therefore, and almost 
coincident with the earliest of these trans-Atlantic 
settlements, developed the deep and pious purpose, 
cherished by their earnest founders, of making each 
citizen here a unit of intelligence and usefulness in his 
community. Not, as in the Old World, were the con- 
cerns of culture and learning to be confined to a priv- 
ileged class or order, while leaving society in the mass 
to wander in the bogs of superstition and ignorance, 
or to sink into pauperism and crime, the hopeless de- 
pendents if not the reprobate foes of society. 

This great idea of a general social intelligence germi- 
nated in the minds of these British colonizers, and 
perhaps it found abroad an inspiration in Holland and 
Protestant Germany. There popular education had 
been widely favored : yet our Anglo-American ancestors 
moulded their institutions for themselves. The best 
and speediest fruition of such a scheme in colonial times 
was found, perhaps, in the New England 'common- 
wealths, Massachusetts Bay leading in that respect, and 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 195 

originating- a plan for her neighboring provinces to 
emulate. For Massachusetts was settled and colonized 
by men of the middle class of England — by that sturdy 
set to which belonged the great Milton and Newton 
in the mother country; and their homogeneousness at 
the start, their congenial views in problems of Congre- 
gationalism — "a church without a bishop and a state 
without a king" — all tended to make them denizens of 
a republic, vigilant and inventive for the common good 
and zealous to promote a civilization of the highest 
order consonant with the shortcomings of human 
endeavor. 

Those eastern colonies were proud of their common 
educational system by the time that separation from 
the mother country was at hand. In 1771 we see a New 
England press proclaiming "the glory of our public 
schools, the foundation of rising youth." The public 
school system of our twentieth century — a concern, still, 
for separate commonwealths of America to build up and 
foster locally, but vastly developed in the new States 
and territories of our broad domain through the gener- 
osity of Congress and the nation in endowments from 
the public land — takes a scope far more comprehensive. 
That system of the present age extends, in some West- 
ern State jurisdictions, to offering a free education of 
sons and daughters from kindergarten to university, 
open liberally, supported by public taxation, and 
unsectarian. And now is inscribed the fundamental 
maxim upon the massive and monumental walls of 
some costly public building for posterity to ponder over, 
"The State requires the education of the people as the 
safeguard of order and liberty." 

Grund, a wise and profound German, who travelled 
in the United States about 1830, observed the differ- 



196 AMERICANS OF 1776 

ence which then distinguished the two great educating 
countries of modern times, as a result of their different 
systems of popular education applied to peoples differ- 
ently governed. "Germans," he writes, "are the best 
people in the world for collecting materials; but the 
Americans understand best how to use them." And to 
American text-books for pupils of one grade or another 
he paid a deserved tribute for their excellence of prepa- 
ration and adaptiveness. Then it was said, as perhaps 
it might be to-day, that while Europe has trained pro- 
founder scholars than the United States in one branch 
of learning or another, not a European nation can ex- 
hibit such a multitude of common people who read, 
write, cipher and show familiarity with the rudiments 
essential to an intelligent, practical course of conduct. 
Of the American common school as we find it to-day 
an accomplished writer and citizen of our own times 
pronounces it "the most original and vital product of 
the national life;"^ and he adds, moreover, what is both 
true and closely pertinent, that our common school has 
had a profound influence upon the government and 
order of society in America from the beginning of our 
colonial life, and has been a formative power in the 
development of our early history as a republic. 

Probably the United Netherlands wtre the best 
schooled population in Europe during the seventeenth 
century. But New England and her English-speaking 
colonists originated their own independent system in 
that respect so far as posterity has the means of judg- 
ing; and the real initiative came, not from the May- 
flower pilgrims of 1620, who had sailed from Delft- 
haven, and hence might have imbibed Dutch ideas, but 
from those later and more liberal settlers who came 
'A. D. Mayo, Report, 1893-94. 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 197 

direct from home to penetrate the wilderness about 
Boston and the north shore of Massachusetts Bay. For 
in 1635 the people of Boston, in town meeting, enacted 
a law establishing a public school "for the teaching and 
nourishing of children." In 1636 the General Court of 
Massachusetts took initial steps toward establishing the 
'earliest college founded in America. Next after Har- 
vard's safe foundation, and while the various towns 
of that colony were providing for their separate gram- 
mar schools as they might, the Massachusetts General 
Court by various enactments, and particularly that of 
1647, outlined a complete system of popular education 
for the colony — with (i) the elementary or district 
school, (2) the grammar or secondary school, and (3) 
the college for higher learning — all as creations by and 
for the general benefit of the people, to be supported 
by the contributions of parents, the gifts of private bene- 
factors, and grants made by the public, all together. 
Connecticut in 1650 made a similar provision. At the 
dawn of American independence, a century and a quar- 
ter later, Connecticut had advanced its standard for 
general education even beyond that of Massachusetts; 
and these two colonies led all the thirteen in the general 
enlightenment of its youth. 



In short, except perhaps for Rhode Island, the scheme 
of popular education was constantly fostered through- 
out colonial New England. Under the example of 
Massachusetts, towns were here laid out after a general 
pattern, which brought the populations compact and 
close together, with the common right of choosing 
deputies to the legislature; and the agreement of fifty 
or sixty families to build a church and support a min- 



198 AMERICANS OF 1776 

ister and schoolmaster made the basis of their incorpo- 
ration into a town, A town with a hundred famihes 
or more was bound to set up a grammar school and 
engage an instructor competent to fit youths for college. 
A town with fifty families should, at all events, appoint 
one to teach the children to read and write; and in 
this latter provision originated the familiar district 
school. 

Dutch settlers of New York, then New Amsterdam, 
had received injunction from the states-general of Hol- 
land "to find speedy means to maintain a clergyman and 
a schoolmaster," and to lay a local tax accordingly. 
This was done about 1633, ^^'^ the New York colony 
established accordingly its free school. Latin was pub- 
licly taught under the rule of Peter Stuyvesant. But 
the British Government, which succeeded in 1664, gave 
to the system of that colony a setback ; the more so since 
a cardinal point was now to supersede a Dutch language 
and Dutch civil and religious influences by loyalty to the 
British Crown and to the doctrine and discipline of the 
Church of England. In Pennsylvania, the Quakers 
interested themselves in free education, and wealthy 
Philadelphians left money to aid in appropriate endow- 
ments. But the want of a homogeneous township sys- 
tem, as in New England, which compacted the inhabi- 
tants and stimulated local pride and the local interest — 
the incongruous character of these middle settlements — 
interfered practically with all such establishments while 
the colonial condition lasted. To a similar want of 
towns and a closely combined population was added as 
a drawback in our Southern colonies the aristocratic 
structure of society among the planters, and the dis- 
position, even in county matters, to keep down the com- 
mon concerns of taxation to the lowest point. Here, 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 199 

as among the English-speaking people of that day 
everywhere who kept to the ideas of the mother country, 
parents were permitted to bring up their children after 
their own discretion ; and the education of youth, relig- 
ious or secular, each head of a household was expected to 
impart for himself after his separate means and ability. 
Governor Berkeley's famous ejaculation, which has 
come down to us for ridicule through the centuries — 
"Thank God, there are no free schools nor printing" in 
Virginia — befitted an age when English nobles 
reasoned that the common people ought first of all to 
submit themselves to their betters, and that all general 
spread of knowledge meant the diffusion of heresy in 
the church, disloyalty to the king and perverse diso- 
bedience. Even among intelligent planters themselves 
in the South was felt the dread of levelling distinctions 
between rich and poor.^ But Jefferson and the Revo- 
lutionists of this Southern section promoted more 
liberal views among their fellow-citizens; and as part 
of a charitable establishment, at least, the education 
of the poor and humble became extended. 

Both in the Middle and Southern colonies, however, 
down to the era of final separation from England, and 
so long as the influence of the Crown lasted, schemes 
of education for the people partook to a considerable 
degree of the nature of almsgiving and patronage, so 
far as the poor man and his children were concerned. 
For their so-called "free school" was one in which the 
rich of the community or men of moderate means paid 
tuition for their children, while the offspring of poverty 
were admitted without charge, if at all. And such, to 
some extent, seems to have been the situation through- 
out our colonies. Gradually, however, in all America 
'2 Ramsay's South Carolina. 



200 AMERICANS OF 1776 

the standard of popular education was raised under the 
instruction of teachers, public or private, whose support 
came by one means or another. And the tuition o^ our 
youth was practical in its scope, and what was taught 
was taught well. "In science," wrote Jefferson in 1785, 
"the mass of the people of Europe is two centuries 
behind us, their literature half a dozen years before us. 
We know books really good which sustain themselves, 
but are meantime out of reach of that nonsense w^hich 
issues from a thousand presses and perishes almost in 
the issuing." 



Here, however, we should also observe that the edu- 
cation of youth in America as in Europe, during most 
of the eighteenth century, was subordinate to the 
supreme work of preparing the soul for an immortal 
existence — for eternal salvation, in the hope of another 
and a higher life beyond the grave. Learning was in 
those days the recognized handmaid of religion; the 
instructor, like the law itself, was our schoolmaster to 
bring us to Christ; and Protestantism, though less 
blindly submissive to its spiritual guides than in those 
European countries which were still ruled by monastic 
orders, was nevertheless exacting in its tenets and dis- 
cipline. To catechize the children once a week — and 
every Monday to go over the points presented by the 
Lord's-day discourses from the pulpit — was habitual 
in our New England public schools ; nor throughout our 
colonies in those days was it deemed a bias incompatible 
with promoting free intellectual growth to habituate the 
young when brought together to an opening prayer and 
the reading of the Scriptures. All such instruction be- 
gan, to be sure, at the home and the fireside, as it always 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 201 

should ; and in each family group, to the pious and con- 
scientious zeal and devotion of those courageous Chris- 
tian women who shared the hardships and privations of 
our pioneer life and who bore and brought up sons and 
daughters was greatly due that sturdiness in first re- 
ligious principles which made America free. To render 
education compulsory in effect from the religious stand- 
point, so that children in families should grow up 
capable of reading "the Holy Word of God and the 
laws of the colony," was proposed in Connecticut as 
early as 1650; and both the Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut codes set forth early the open Bible in English 
vernacular as the compend of liberal culture, opposed 
to the practice of the mediaeval church; "it being one 
chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men 
from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former 
times keeping them in an unknown tongue." And since 
the English system of parochial schools committed the 
work of popular instruction largely to the ministers of 
the Established Church, so in this country, without a 
church establishment at all, strictly speaking, did the 
local clergy of the ruling faith of each colony exercise 
in those early times a considerable supervision over the 
local common schools, whether as committeemen or 
pastors, though with a lesser influence than abroad, and 
liable to the offset of dissenting sects in the community. 
Ere the present day, all this has been greatly changed. 
In our modern eagerness to avoid all possible charge 
of bringing religious prepossessions to bear upon a 
young child's mind, we tend to the opposite extreme 
of paganizing the offspring upon whom must rest in 
turn the full responsibility of sustaining or destroying 
the fabric of free government. Free will, free choice 
in concerns of the human soul, does not draw the present 



202 AMERICANS OF 1776 

line at sectarianism only, but often are our public edu- 
cators forbidden to give a bias to Bible teachings or to 
instill into the youthful mind a preference for Christian 
institutions. In its effort to be liberal with common 
school standards in matters of the conscience, the public 
will dispense with prayer and the reading of the Scrip- 
tures when youth are gathered together for self- 
improvement; so that among all great works of liter- 
ature in our language, the one ancient, sublime and 
indispensable to mankind of all books is studiously 
avoided. This seems neither wise nor consistent on 
our part. Is not the child biased in the secular studies 
of life; in the discoveries and even the speculations of 
modern material science; in human history, economics, 
geography and the facts and deductions of liberal arts 
and sciences ? Do we hesitate to mould his plastic mind 
in favor of his country, its flag and its political insti- 
tutions and ambitions? Do we refuse to prejudice his 
views as to the great theories of human speculation — 
Newton's gravitation, Darwin's evolution, Spencer's 
survival of the fittest? Do we refuse to display the 
charts of the starry heavens, contrived for us by the 
bold astronomer, who views that vast celestial domain 
as through a glass darkly and not face to face ? Igno- 
rance in these intelligent times is in some respects far 
more reprehensible than a possible secondary error; 
and so is it, as it seems to me, with regard to that 
knowledge which, rightly bestowed, should fit the soul 
for a sweep of that immortal existence to which this life 
is but the prelude — which should fortify mortality itself 
against selfish and corrupt indulgence in the present life 
and make it strong to endure whatever bodily ills, trials 
and vicissitudes of failure or misfortune active adult life 
may prove to develope. 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 203 

True is it, however, that thus far in our national 
career an innate desire to hve true, moral and upright 
lives seems still to impel youth forward in the right 
direction. How much of this impulsion comes from 
heredity and the religious force of former precedent it 
would be hard to say. But personal example counts for 
much with the youth of every generation. And much 
of the determining influence in life is unconsciously 
exerted for good or evil by those who are pursuing 
ideals and plans of their own, while manifesting, inci- 
dentally, their belief and aims to those about them. 



With due provincial variation, the range of common 
education in America while royalty lasted was this : The 
education of the child began at home. But as to chil- 
dren past the age of tender nurture, neighbors grouped 
together and afforded, for some winter weeks at least, 
a training in the primary or district school. For this 
the town or district raised as it might by taxation, and 
beyond this, individual gifts or tuition charges supplied 
the needful. If an outside teacher came to conduct the 
school, he was paid to some extent in kind and not in 
money alone; the families would board him around 
among themselves. All such instruction was practical, 
being chiefly confined to the rudiments of reading, 
writing and arithmetic and to encouraging a taste and 
proficiency in the English mother tongue. In the Dutch 
schools of our New Amsterdam, the disposition had 
been to put boys early to business. In the great farming 
communities of our North-Atlantic slope children 
were busily employed for most of the year ; and so was 
it with the sons of tradesmen and mechanics soon to be 
apprenticed out. But in the "free school" or "grammar 



204 AMERICANS OF 1776 

school" proper, wherever it might flourish, the scheme 
of studies took a wider range; though all such liberal 
tuition was rather for the children of those, prosperous 
or ambitious for their progeny, who meant to send them 
to college and fit them for a profession, chiefly for 
divinity. This "grammar school" broadened conse- 
quently into classical instruction in Latin and Greek, 
besides providing the higher English branches. There 
were "free schools," so called, in the mother country, 
the most notable among them supported by endowments 
of one kind or another ; but on the soil of this new con- 
tinent sprang up these grammar schools, modern and 
spontaneous in their origin, and maintained not by 
single benefactors so much as by the people themselves. 
Such creations, once more, were sustained by all the 
means locally obtainable, public or private. Few if any 
of such schools could rightly be called "free," except to 
the children of the poor.^ An American public school 
at our present day is the possession of the whole people, 
built and maintained usually by taxation alone; yet 
children of the poor and untaxed attend it with no 
designation apart from the children of the taxpaying, 
and we say truly enough that it is free. 

What "free school" meant in the seventeenth century 
(observes that illustrious educator, the late Herbert B. 
Adams) was free in the sense of teaching the liberal 
arts preparatory to college training; and in England 
and her colonies free schools were originally synony- 
mous with Latin schools or grammar schools.^ Con- 

^Franklin took but one short term at the Boston Latin (or 
"Grammar") school, and he lived to repay his native town a thou- 
sand-fold. His bronze effigy looks this day upon the now vacant 
lot where that school stood. 

^See Educational Series: William and Mary, etc., H. B. 
Adams. 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 205 

sequently the high school or academy — the latter word 
then held too sacred to come readily into use — was a 
broadening of the American grammar school, so as 
more immediately to prepare for college, the primitive 
grammar school serving rather to round off the average 
youth's education.^ 

Thus did our colonial Latin or grammar school be- 
come "the cornerstone of the college proper."^ Some 
of our American colleges carried on in these times their 
own grammar or high school, which was in a sense 
conjoined with the college itself, and served as a feeder 
or preparatory annex to the college. Kings (or 
Columbia) had such a seminary. Princeton was thus 
supplied, and from the senior class of its grammar 
school we see ten admitted in 1772 to the freshman class 
of the college proper. Philadelphia's great institution 
of higher learning, the University of Pennsylvania, 
originated in 1740 in a charity school. From thence 
sprang up an "academy," nine years later; from the 
academy a college in 1755 ; and that college during the 
Revolutionary War grew into a university, the first 
to be incorporated in the whole United States by that 
supremely dignified title. During the last years of 
colonial rule, the Pennsylvania College and Academy 
were in close alliance, and together asked gifts from the 
public. Franklin, who in a sense was chief founder of 
this noble and expansive institution, wrote of it in 175T 
that the academy was flourishing beyond expectation; 
that it had already more than one hundred scholars, 
and constantly increased in numbers. It was served, 

^The separation of "Latin" and English high school is of post- 
colonial date. 

^H. B. Adams. Besides religion and letters, education was to 
be "in good manners." 



2o6 AMERICANS OF 1776 

he said, by excellent masters, who were paid good 
salaries; by a rector, who taught Latin and Greek; a 
mathematical professor and three assistant tutors. The 
scholars paid each £4 (or $20) a year.^ Old William 
and Mary had also in colonial days a grammar school, 
whose privileges became in some way confounded with 
those of the college proper, much to the disrelish of 
baccalaureate graduates. Jefferson, when governor of 
Virginia during the Revolution, caused this grammar 
school to be abolished, hoping that more dignity would 
be given thereby to the college course. 

The native bent of all cis-Atlantic education in those 
days, so as to give to our settlers the rudiments of a 
good English training, was clearly apparent. To make 
vernacular scholars of the rising youth was strongly 
kept in view, both as to composition and oral expres- 
sion. Franklin wrote with pride of the proficiency 
shown at Philadelphia's "academy" in English decla- 
mation" — a practice always of great service to youth 
in forming taste for eloquence and pronunciation upon 
the best models. "We have little boys here under 
seven," says one of his letters, "who can deliver an ora- 
tion with more propriety than most preachers." 



In proof of the universal uplifting sought by public 
educators in our leading provinces, we should not omit 
the pains taken — in Boston and Philadelphia, at least — 
to set up night schools for affording the rudiments to 
those whose days were too much occupied to yield the 
usual hours for tuition. In 1769 the opening of a night 

*Yet two years later he described the institution as consider- 
ably in debt, with a vacancy in the rectorship not yet filled. 
^2 B. Franklin's Works, 235, 242, etc. (1751-53). 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 207 

school was announced in Philadelphia at the Friends' 
public schoolhouse, to instruct youth in "reading, 
writing and arithmetic;" and this, I presume, was pro- 
vided at the common cost. In Boston, a tutor "in 
writing and arithmetic" was detailed in 1772 to attend 
every school at 6 o'clock in the evening. About 1733, 
Connecticut foreshadowed her later State policy of 
granting public lands as a permanent fund for educa- 
tion; and not only did this colony encourage public 
schools, but it discouraged private ones. 

In America's instruction of the rudiments, the time- 
honored dame familiar to European countries seems not 
to have figured largely; but male teachers, young and 
progressive, imparted to pupils still younger the stimu- 
lus of their inspiration. College students, in fact, or 
young college graduates, wherever the sphere of col- 
legiate influence might conveniently extend, taught 
temporarily in the rural district or grammar schools; 
and in so doing they helped out the needful expense of 
their own higher education. This by the eighteenth 
century was largely the case in New England, where 
Harvard and Yale long arranged the midwinter vaca- 
tion so that needy sophomores, juniors or seniors might 
conveniently absent themselves for such a purpose, 
making up specially when they returned the overlapping 
studies of the year's curriculum. 

As for the famous "district school" for the rudi- 
ments, it has travelled far and wide on this continent, 
as the tale of many a farmer's son or pioneer still living 
may remind us. The old red schoolhouse or log cabin, 
on a convenient lot, owned by the rustic community, 
and opened but a few weeks or months of the year, 
when home and farming work is dull and a child's labor 
may be spared, has given the mental start in life to 



2o8 AMERICANS OF 1776 

many a rural American ambitious of bettering his con- 
dition. In fact, the New England or Northern district 
school, appropriate to our Revolutionary age, is still 
reproduced in the rude wilderness beyond the Alle- 
ghanies or near the Rocky range and in the vast basin 
of the Mississippi. Its type is still seen with more or 
less variation and extension in the simpler villages of 
New England itself, where, together with the town 
meeting, they flourished a century and a half ago. The 
primitive system may thus locally avail, with supplies 
assessed among remote rural folk whose purses are 
scant; these furnish fuel for the winter school from 
their own woodpiles, while those board the teacher 
round in turn ; families with the largest number of 
children to be taught bearing the chief burden of the 
hospitality. The teacher himself goes early on a 
winter's morning and makes the fire which is to warm 
up the schoolroom, before the scholars arrive to take 
their seats on the benches, with rude desks, green 
painted, or perhaps mere boards, planed and pinioned, 
as a table before them. Such schools could hardly be 
graded ; the teacher called up classes in turn as occasion 
might serve him ; and much of his time was spent in 
setting copies for the writing books or in mending with 
his so-called penknife the clumsy urchin's goosequill. 
If wise, he armed himself with rod, ruler, switch or 
ferule in token of his authority; and many have been 
the stories among returned college students thus placed 
in charge, of tussles with the older boys, bigger than 
themselves, where some rebel, who made purposely an 
issue of strength, had to be thrown upon the floor and 
physically compelled before the new master could rule 
his little realm respected. Girls and boys of neighbor- 
ing families here collected day by day for their tasks, 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 209 

taking their sports at recess apart ; and the visit of the 
district school committee was a crowning episode of the 
term. 



By the year of the Stamp Act, America had, besides 
her pubHc schools, good corresponding means of private 
instruction, whether as preparatory to college or for 
completing the average youth's training for active life. 
In old Virginia and such other colonies as were loth to 
tax themselves for common education, parents of means 
and social standing patronized largely these private 
schools, whose masters were often Scotch or English 
clergymen, liberally trained, but without glebe or tithes 
for an adequate support. Jefferson, Madison and Mon- 
roe received their early schooling in this manner. Pur- 
suing the fundamental English notion that every head 
of a household should teach his children according to 
his ability, the plantation lords made much, moreover, 
of private tutors in their own households. One Vir- 
ginia gentleman we see advertising in 1774 for a person 
to teach Greek and Latin in his family. Another in 
1772 announces his wish to engage some single gentle- 
man who would live upon his plantation with the 
family ; he desires five or six of his grandsons grounded 
in grammar, writing and arithmetic under his own 
inspection, and offers £50 a year, with board, not 
objecting to "standing in" besides for the cost of wash- 
ing and slight repairs. Washington, while looking 
after the education of his young ward and stepson, Jack 
Custis (whom, by the way, he called "my son-in-law" 
in one of his letters of that date), followed the fashion 
of his province in putting out the boy at the age of 
fourteen to a church incumbent at Annapolis, who had 



2IO AMERICANS OF 1776 

other pupils; having provided for the lad's earlier 
studies under another clergyman, who was domiciled 
at Mount Vernon. 

There were at this time private schools of varying 
merit at Philadelphia, New York, Boston and our other 
chief centres, and the word "academy" came at length 
to be shared by such institutions of the higher grade. 
Besides managers and head masters, applicants for the 
post of tutor in a school or private family made their 
wants known widely through the local press. Thus in 
1772, in the Pennsylvania Gazette, one offered to be 
private tutor in a gentleman's family or to take a school 
near the city; he had taught in this country several 
years with approbation; he was sober and intelligent; 
he could instruct in spelling, in "reading English with 
propriety," in arithmetic, merchants' accounts, trigo- 
nometry and navigation. In New York City a private 
teacher of Latin, Greek, science and mathematics 
offered to provide pupils with a better knowledge of 
English "than is common in the reading and writing 
[or public] schools," and to teach the English tongue 
grammatically. We see a boarding school opened in 
1772 at Trenton, whose head master engaged to teach 
the English language grammatically, and give lessons 
in writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping after the Italian 
method, geometry, trigonometry, mensuration, survey- 
ing, gauging and navigation.^ 

The prominence given to the English rudiments in 
such appeals is noteworthy ; and the language, the liter- 
ature of our mother tongue, was held the first essential 

*"Those who intrust him with the care of their children," he 
unctuously added, "may depend on his exciting so as to facilitate 
their learning, instruct their morals and in every respect approve 
his conduct to God and man. N. B. Proper care will be taken of 
their clothes." 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 211 

of secular culture. "English grammar, logic and com- 
position," argues one advertiser of 1772, "are much 
insisted on in these days for making a figure in the 
lettered world, and enabling young masters and misses 
to write polite letters on business and friendship." Yet 
our best private schools and teachers were competent, 
besides, for grounding in Latin and Greek, and youths 
were well prepared for college and a classical course. 
French, however, which ranked as a polite accomplish- 
ment, was largely imparted by the music and dancing 
masters from abroad. 

The strenuous exertion for self-improvement, nursed 
in New England life by both the public or compulsory 
system and that of private or voluntary enterprise, was 
already apparent. One hard-worked private teacher 
of Boston, whose day school was already a success, 
advertised to open an evening school, if sufficient 
patronage were offered him. Another in that town 
expressly conformed his time to those M^ho attended the 
Latin school, besides carrying on a school at the usual 
hours, for spelling, writing and arithmetic — 8 to 11 
in the morning and 2 to 5 in the afternoon; and this 
special school occupied the space from 11 to 12 a.m. 
and 5 to 6 p.m. "Such pupils as choose to be instructed 
at home," announces another advertiser, "will be waited 
on there at such hours as may be most convenient." 
And here, finally, a private morning school was opened 
for young ladies or young gentlemen "who have a mind 
to become acquainted with "French, English, arith- 
metic, penmanship or epistolary writing;" and here the 
hours named were 5 to 7 a.m. "On morning's 
wings how active springs the mind !" adds this last 
competitor for favor, dropping into poetry. Many 
of America's private schools took then, as in later 



212 AMERICANS OF 1776 

times, both day scholars and boarders as a means of 
support. 



Co-education prevailed, of course, to a considerable 
extent in our colonial schools, and especially in rustic 
communities, where boys and girls grew up as acquaint- 
ances together, and each family supplied its quota of 
both sexes. In some of the high-grade private schools 
provision was thus made, though the more select among 
them educated the daughters in their teens apart. The 
training, however, for women differed considerably 
from that bestowed upon her natural protectors, and 
found perhaps its outer bounds in pleasing accomplish- 
ments ; there was, of course, no college for women thus 
early, nor could a careful outfit be afforded in the 
classics and liberal sciences. At a private school for 
young ladies in Boston, conducted "by a lady," we see 
announced French, English and needlework as the chief 
branches. At Williamsburg, in 1774, a "female board- 
ing school on the English plan" offered reading, tam- 
bour and other kinds of needlework ; while dancing and 
writing masters were supplied, and lessons given on the 
guitar. Another Virginia school for young ladies in 
1772, besides reading, writing and arithmetic, set forth 
Dresden tent work, shell work and all kinds of needle- 
work. In fact, the skilled product of woman's peculiar 
weapon was miuch insisted upon, with its technical 
details, in all our young ladies' schools — point, Brussels, 
Dresden, embroidery and all kinds of darning, French 
quilting, marking samplers, plain work and knitting 
being minutely set forth in many a school prospectus. 
Even milliners undertook to teach specially all kinds 
of needlework "in the most genteel and elegant taste." 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 213 

Select schools for young women, and particularly the 
boarding schools, were conducted by persons of their 
own sex; propriety and good manners were treated as 
matters of careful attention, not less than the funda- 
mental morals; and then, as always, the tone and 
select companionship promised by such establishments 
counted for much with parents in their selection who 
had daughters to bring out or push forward in society. 
Most likely the choicest of such institutions did not 
have to advertise in the papers at all; but we see one 
which in 1774 offered, among other inducements to 
patrons, to introduce the young ladies "to genteel com- 
pany" at very moderate expense. While French and 
dancing lessons were often provided as an extra in such 
schools, immigrants from France gave special tuition 
of their own outside the seminary. "These two 
branches," observes a French refugee in 1776, who had 
set up schools of his own for these accomplishments, 
"are now becoming more necessary as the means how 
to behave in fine company." 



The true aim in all education of the young — and 
especially in training the children of a whole people — 
should be to fit them for their probable vocation in life, 
so that they may go forth into the world better equipped 
to sustain the duties of a useful and responsible career. 
And hence, while average Americans of the sterner sex 
are trained to become good farmers, merchants, me- 
chanics or professional men, skilful and prosperous each 
in his own sphere of activity, so far as may be, and 
withal good citizens for all possible concerns of peace 
or war, besides competent heads and founders of a 
family, woman's sphere may still be regarded as 



214 AMERICANS OF 1776 

secluded and subordinate by comparison, influential 
most of all in the household and conventional society, 
with marriage and the nurture of children as the destiny 
most likely to assure her best fruition in positive influ- 
ence and activity. Hence at this era her domain was 
accepted as essentially that of the human heart and her 
empire as founded upon gentle submission and devo- 
tion — the best possible discipline for inspiring man's 
devotion and love in return. Both sexes blended into a 
common purpose. The patriot sons and sire went forth 
with sword and musket to win free government ; while 
the mothers and daughters at home sewed shirts or pro- 
vided blankets for the soldiery ; and the spinning-wheel 
parties of our earlier non-importation days bore witness 
to the self-sacrificing loyalty to liberty's cause of which 
the women of our Revolution were capable in the time 
of trial. And so has it been at every crisis of a people's 
freedom wherever that freedom is fought for. 

One should not assume to prophesy or forecast what 
changes in human life and conditions our new century 
is destined to bring forth. That science and discovery 
will add much to the world's sum of human knowledge 
and capability is certain. As to human government and 
intercourse, two great problems remain for our better 
comprehension and solution. One involves the ulti- 
mate relation of the different races of mankind and the 
test of their fundamental equality or inequality. The 
other concerns the relative position in the several races 
that man and woman shall occupy toward one another. 
If the different races of mankind cannot live in peaceful 
union and equality with one another, the black or the 
yellow skinned may seek their destiny apart from the 
Caucasian, and, achieving the best that is in them, make 
institutions separate, and so preserve with dignity on 



COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION 215 

separated domains their separate independence. But 
man and woman, of whatever race, were made for one 
another, and their independent separation for perma- 
nent companionship is morally impossible. Sooner or 
later, if they have not already done so, the sexes must 
adjust themselves to one another in their lives and 
fortunes; and in any true adjustment which deserves 
permanence, it will not be that what one sex does the 
other does likewise and equally, or not quite so well, 
but that each shall supplement the other and both grow 
into a better comprehension that ministration, comfort 
and support are mutually needful to man and woman, 
and that in sight of God and nature an equally high, 
honorable and essential mission awaits them, not in 
merging so much the identity of the one sex or the 
other, but rather in their lasting mutual love and co- 
operation, as offspring of the highest types of a Divine 
creation.^ 

^The simplicity of common school education in those earlier 
days as contrasted with the complexity of our present school 
studies has been noted by some leading educators of this day. 



XV 

COLLEGES AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 

EIGHT important establishments of the higher 
learning flourished in these colonies prior to 
the Revolution — Harvard, William and Mary, 
Yale, the Academy and College at Philadelphia (since 
expanded into the University of Pennsylvania), Prince- 
ton, King's (since Columbia), Brown and Dartmouth, 
this being the order of their separate creation.^ Only 
three out of the eight — Harvard, William and Mary, 
with Yale, whose foundation dates at 1701 — were 
ushered into existence prior to the eighteenth century. 
Brown and Dartmouth, both organized after the French 
and Indian War, were the youngest of them all. 

These eight institutions, none of which bore in those 
days a more imposing title than college, had each its 
own distinct provincial origin for provincial needs, its 
own local environment, while its educating influence 
beyond such confines was potent only in a subordinate 
sense. To train up specially men of learning for the 
ministry of the religious sect which its own colonial 
settlers and inhabitants favored was a prime object 
in the original foundation of these colleges, and more 
particularly in the three oldest. Yet, as we shall see, 
great lawyers, great statesmen, as well as great divines, 
gave lustre to the rolls of their alumni as time went on. 

'Besides the above, Washington and Lee in Virginia dates its 
foundation at 1749, and Rutgers in New Jersey at 1766. 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 217 

The founding of Harvard, in 1636, the first institution 
of them all, was as unique and impressive an educa- 
tional fact in the settlement of our Massachusetts col- 
ony as that other contemporaneous one I have already 
described — the training of all youth in the rudiments 
as a fundamental duty of the commonwealth. 

Benefactions and gifts, great and small, public and 
private, were sought and obtained in every direction 
within the Massachusetts jurisdiction to sustain and build 
up this earliest of America's higher institutions of learn- 
ing ; and so was it with the later colleges of our colonial 
era in other commonwealths. Sturdy Connecticut, like- 
wise emulous in the cause of education, profited by so 
pious an example; aiding generously, however, in Har- 
vard's success by sending students to her sister colony 
until the time came, in 1701, when, with the aid of 
benefactions from among her own people, another and 
a home experiment of the kind might propitiously be 
undertaken. In both these colonies, in fact, the legis- 
lature led off with its own grant of endowment, the 
British Crown showing no special interest. But appeal 
was made, besides, for private gifts of the faithful. In 
Massachusetts, the timely benefaction of a young dying 
clergyman, a dissenter from the Church of England 
like his fellow-citizens, came in place of royal bounty 
and patronage, assuring life to the new-born enterprise. 
In Connecticut, a rich London merchant and an ex- 
settler of the colony, who had lately amassed a fortune 
in the East India trade, was destined, through his 
generous and repeated gifts, to have his name, Elihu 
Yale, bestowed by baptism upon the new college, and so 
be identified forever, like gentle John Harvard, with 
the cause of advanced education in this new world. 
Both these New England establishments, fairly indig- 



2i8 AMERICANS OF 1776 

enous in origin and owing little of pecuniary en- 
couragement to the British Crown, developed healthily 
into seminaries of American independence. 

With William and Mary, intermediate in origin, and 
planted, far remote from New England, in the Old 
Dominion colony, the conditions of birth and early 
growth were quite different. This institution, as its 
name imports, was chartered and endowed in loyal 
recognition of the new accession to the British throne 
which followed the final expulsion of the Stuarts. And 
it is notable that the same Governor Berkeley of Vir- 
ginia, whose bigoted denunciation of free schools and 
printing has been so often quoted against him in our 
own enlightened age,^ was by no means disinclined to 
patronize, among the privileged of his colony, the cause 
of higher learning which they strove in his day to 
obtain. For the Virginia province was not wanting 
in ideals of education, but to raise a suitable fund 
by public taxation was the practical drawback. In the 
present instance, patronage from abroad removed the 
initial difficulty, and good William and Mary, the 
world's only notable sovereigns In the duality of hus- 
band and wife, started the proposed college establish- 
ment with the means of a public support, and granted 
a liberal charter besides. Its charter passed the seals 
at London in 1691, and by 1693 the college was organ- 
ized and set in operation at Williamsburg, bearing in 
gratitude the joint names of its royal patrons. ^ Unlike 
our other colonial colleges, the toll and tribulation of 

^Ante, p. 199. 

^This charter proclaimed broadly the establishment of a sem- 
inary for youth in a perpetual college of divinity, philosophy, 
languages, and other good arts and sciences. One condition 
of this charter required the college authorities to furnish to 
England's ruling sovereign yearly, on the 5th of November, 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 219 

William and Mary came late, instead of early; for it 
started its work with a money gift from the Crown of 
£2000, and with the further substantial privilege of 
certain taxes and perquisites. We see great institutions 
of learning in our day sustained by steel or standard 
oil; but the prime source of original support for 
William and Mary was tobacco, by a levy upon 
the export of that staple. The higher education 
thus made available in Virginia was intended for 
Maryland's benefit, besides, and the little candle at 
Williamsburg threw its beams, to speak metaphorically, 
over the whole region of Chesapeake Bay. A peculiar 
tie of affection bound this college to the mother church 
of Protestant England.^ 



My main purpose here is to picture these three earli- 
est of American colleges — and those, besides, of 
eighteenth century origin — as they appeared and oper- 
ated at the time when the bonds of colonial allegiance 
loosened and dropper apart. And first, to recur to Har- 
vard, the oldest and proudest of them all. Under the 
wise and temperate administration of Edward Holyoke, 
who died in office in the non-importation year, 1769, 
at the age of eighty — ^the longest incumbent of the 
presidency in official term, save its present head,^ that 

two copies of Latin verses ; and this — intended, I apprehend, 
rather as a token of safe allegiance than a proof of consum- 
mate scholarship — was regularly furnished while Virginia re- 
mained a British province. See H. B. Adams, in i Bureau of 
Education Reports (1887). 

'The Bishop of London was the first chancellor of this insti- 
tution, and the Virginian Bishop Madison, in after years, made 
here the connecting link of an American episcopate in Virginia. 

'Dr, Charles W. Eliot. 



220 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Harvard has ever known — this institution prospered 
and advanced steadily in the confidence and affection 
of Massachusetts, despite the disfavor or indifference of 
Crown and Parhament. Native statesmen and men 
renowned in science, law and medicine graduated here, 
as well as noted divines of the Congregational faith. 
Hutchinson, the accomplished lieutenant-governor of 
this province, who served his king too faithfully to 
please his own fellow-subjects, was a Harvard man of 
the period; and more famous alumni, because famous 
rebels, were Samuel and John Adams, John Hancock, 
Jonathan Trumbull and Timothy Pickering — bright 
stars of our patriot constellation. Nor was it strange, 
considering the traditions of this college and common- 
wealth, that when Boston's long-smouldering discon- 
tent burst out into a blaze of opposition to the King and 
Parliament, Harvard should have espoused in sym- 
pathy the cause of the Massachusetts people against all 
oppression from over the seas. 

Yet Harvard's authorities were wary during the first 
years of collision, and sustained the courtesies and dig- 
nity of their peculiar station. When in 1769 the 
Massachusetts legislature protested against sitting in 
Boston's old State House, with British redcoats sta- 
tioned outside and a cannon pointed at the door. Gov- 
ernor Bernard ordered its sessions to be changed to 
Cambridge. To this the college corporation acceded, 
giving the use of Holden Chapel to the people's repre- 
sentatives. But when afterward the royal governor 
began issuing writs for convening the legislature at 
Harvard College, the corporation excepted to such sov- 
ereign infringement of its rights; and governor and 
council yielding the point, a formal request for the use 
of the college buildings was preferred and granted. 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 221 

So then the General Court met and organized at the 
college, and after a sermon at the church, a dinner was 
served at Harvard Hall. In 1771, Hutchinson having 
by this time been made lieutenant-governor, the college 
sent him an address of congratulation, felicitating Har- 
vard upon the honor shown by the Crown to one of its 
alumni; and Hutchinson made presently a public visit 
to the college with military pomp, when a beatific an- 
them was sung, a sermon preached and Latin orations 
pronounced. Laudation of the King had been avoided 
in the corporation address, but not in the lieutenant- 
governor's reply ; and this whole demonstration offend- 
ing the downright opposers of royal policy, Harvard 
changed presently her tone, as the logic of swift- 
moving events required. Classes of her zealous 
students had on various occasions since the Stamp-Act 
year passed resolutions to wear clothes of American 
fabrics on commencement and to withdraw their custom 
from a certain Boston bookseller known to be a rabid 
Tory. Even the theses in 1768 were printed vaunt- 
ingly on paper made in the Massachusetts town of 
Milton. Afterward, when Cambridge became the 
highway of forcible resistance to the King's troops, and 
then headquarters of the American army, the college 
shifted its quarters; from the year 1775 commencement 
was omitted for some years, and Concord became 
for a brief spell Harvard's temporary seat of learning. 
Then back once more came students and faculty to 
Cambridge, whose buildings had been damaged by our 
Continental troops while occupying them as barracks 
during the siege of Boston.^ 

*It is a controverted point whether Burgoyne's officers, after 
the surrender of that general, were quartered in these college 
buildings. See XI Harv. Grad. Magazine, 50. 



222 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Meanwhile, the judicious Holyoke had been followed 
in the college presidency by Samuel Locke, a clergy- 
man, who held office only four years, and resigned sud- 
denly in 1773 for some unknown cause, his tender of 
office being accepted without formal regrets. To him, 
in 1774, succeeded Samuel Langdon of Portsmouth, 
New Hampshire, after others had declined, and this 
divine served through the most exciting years of the 
war. It was he who, at Cambridge, in cap and gown, 
on the lawn near the college grounds where Prescott's 
men were drawn up on their march to Bunker Hill, 
prayed for their success in the coming fight. 

During the epoch I am describing, and shortly be- 
fore Revolution, a rivalry sprang up between Yale 
and Harvard ; and while the college at Cambridge was 
already thought lax in religious tenets, Yale was rigidly 
orthodox, and appealed accordingly to rural New Eng- 
land. This New Haven institution kept the main pur- 
pose of training for the ministry still in view, yet more 
than half her graduates were already laymen. The 
zealous but obstinate Clap and the affable and easy- 
going Daggett carried Yale's presidency to 1777 and 
the climax of Revolution; and there were brilliant 
tutors in those days, Jonathan Trumbull, Timothy 
Dwight and Joseph Buckminster being of the number. 
After our struggle for independence had once begun, 
Yale received little aid from the State for twenty years. 
The college stood high by this time in reputation, and 
was perhaps the highest in all British America for num- 
bers and good scholarship; but its students were 
thought lacking in good manners, gentle amusements 
and polite accomplishments.^ Revolution, while it 
lasted, severely crippled Yale, as it did our other col- 
^Education Reports, No. 14, B. C. Steiner. 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 223 

leges, disturbing the customary influx of young men, 
some of whom would go forth to fight for their country, 
while others came in meanly under the academic wing 
to avoid conscription. Nathan Hale, whom the British 
executed as a spy, was a Yale graduate, and so were 
General Wooster and that distinguished war governor 
of New Jersey, William Livingston. Connecticut, we 
should recall, escaped the worst ravages of war, except 
for Tryon's raid in 1779; yet Yale, like our other col- 
leges, had a hard struggle for existence in those years 
of war and distress, though Dr. Stiles, installed as 
president in 1778, supplied an able administration. 

At William and Mary, before Revolution developed, 
a good understanding was kept up in Virginia's capital 
between the college authorities and the Established 
Church of the province. The Episcopal clergy held 
their conventions in its buildings, and so did Virginia's 
House of Burgesses before their own edifice was 
erected. A representative of the college sat regularly 
in the Virginia legislature down to the Revolution. 
The faculty of instruction, here as elsewhere, preserved 
the old classical fundament of an English liberal 
education. Scholarships were established, and the 
annual revenue of the college before the outbreak of 
Revolution has been estimated as high as £2300. The 
establishment prospered throughout the colonial age; 
it was patronized by Virginia's influential families; it 
supplied to the patriot cause besides Jefferson, its most 
distinguished graduate, strong patriot leaders like Ben. 
Harrison, Thomas Nelson, George Wythe, Peyton 
Randolph and John Tyler, the elder. Washington and 
John Marshall, though not regular students or under- 
graduates, owed each something to William and Mary 
for the credentials of his civil profession. When 



224 AMERICANS OF 1776 

America's fight for independence began, far away in 
Massachusetts, there were here seventy students, more 
than half of whom joined speedily the Continental 
army, James Monroe being of the number. 

But for years previous to 1775 complaints had been 
made that, notv/ithstanding its rich resources, superior, 
in fact, to those of any other college in the land, 
William and Mary fell behind the times in fulfilling its 
ends; that its discipline was lax; that both curriculum 
and strict tuition were wanting; that students elected 
chiefly their own studies, were allowed to go and come 
as they chose and gained their degrees too promiscu- 
ously.^ For these or other reasons Madison took up 
his own course at Princeton in preference ; while Wash- 
ington himself, after encouraging the son of a personal 
friend to make a like choice of the New Jersey college, 
put his young ward, Custis, in King's (or Columbia), 
New York City.^ 



A few passing words with regard to the five new 
American colleges of the eighteenth century, born prior 
to the Revolution — Pennsylvania, Princeton, Kings (or 
Columbia), Brown and Dartmouth. Of the origin and 
rapid development of Pennsylvania I have spoken f and 
this institution, which in ante-Revolutionary times was 
usually styled the Academy and College "of Philadel- 
phia," made boast of its liberality in having a provost 
(or chief executive) of the English Church, while its 

^V.G.,1774. 

^11 Washington's Works, 262, etc. Part of the undergraduate 
equipment of this young Virginia lad of independent means 
consisted of two horses, with a young colored boy to wait upon 
him. 

^Ante, p. 205. ^ 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 225 

vice-provost belonged to the Church of Scotland. 
Pennsylvania started the earliest medical school in this 
country, with courses of lectures and the award of pro- 
fessional diplomas, long before the Revolution. Chas- 
tellux, attending its college commencement near the 
close of the war, found leaders of Congress, the presi- 
dent and executive council of the State, General Wash- 
ington and the French minister among platform dig- 
nitaries with himself. Declamations in Latin and 
English by the graduating students impressed him very 
favorably. But in natural science this college seemed 
backward ; "almost the only book of astronomy studied 
at Philadelphia," he observed, "is the almanac." The 
institution had sought in colonial times to stand well 
with the mother country. At the June commencement 
of 1765, "before a numerous and polite audience," as 
we read, that famous provost, William Smith, of Scotch 
importation, expressed in an elegant speech his warm- 
est gratitude for the kind patronage of his sacred 
majesty and for the noble English benefactions already 
received for placing the college on a secure foundation. 
Dr. Smith made here a capable and energetic head, 
long in useful service, despite some vicissitudes. We 
see him in 1772, while soliciting funds in South Caro- 
lina, claiming with pride that Pennsylvania had already 
sent forth "a succession of patriots, lawgivers, sages 
and divines." 

Princeton was even more fortunate when she secured 
Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon for president in 1768, an 
exotic likewise from Scotland, where he had gained 
distinction for learning and piety. In war times, when 
college work was for the time suspended, Witherspoon 
served acceptably in our Continental Congress. Impart- 
ing to his institution the spirit of liberty, he signed his 



226 AMERICANS OF 1776 

name both to the Charter of Independence and Articles 
of Confederation. Chastelkix, in his tour, met this 
accomplished educator and held easy converse with him 
in French. He found him ambitious for his college 
and disposed to claim its rank as that already of a com- 
plete university, with a capacity for two hundred 
students, besides the outboarders. About the time of 
Witherspoon's instalment at Princeton, the college 
trustees entered upon a new scheme for making the 
necessary living there as moderate as possible, at the 
same time goading parents and guardians of the stu- 
dents to greater punctuality in their remittances.^ 
They also made a post-graduate provision, encouraging 
those who had completed their regular college course 
to come back and pursue advanced studies, "whether in 
divinity, law or physic, or such liberal accomplishments 
in general as fit young gentlemen for serving their 
country in public stations." Madison, the most famous 
of Princeton's alumni in that era, availed himself of 
these post-graduate opportunities. Yet in the year 
1772, when Madison and Freneau took their degrees 
here as bachelors, Princeton had a graduating class of 
only twelve; and we must suppose that Dr. Wither- 
spoon's grand schemes for his college, like those of some 
other contemporaries, discounted considerably the aus- 
picious future. 

King's (now Columbia) College in New York City 
was founded and administered as an institution of the 
Episcopal faith, though broadly conducted in educa- 
tional respects. This, like Pennsylvania, boasted the 
special favor of the first three Georges, and some hand- 
some gifts came from abroad for the Philadelphia and 
New York colleges jointly. Here, too, somewhat later 
^William and Mary had likewise to dun its debtors. V. G., 1771. 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 227 

than at Philadelphia, was started by 1767 a medical 
school. King's sent forth her patriot sons, Jay and 
Hamilton among the rest, in the day of patriot resist- 
ance; yet the political atmosphere of that college was 
somewhat equivocal.^ In 1776 its books and apparatus 
were stored, and under direction of the provincial Com- 
mittee of Safety, its buildings were devoted to hospital 
uses; and when this college reopened its portals at the 
close of the war, a State charter changed its name per- 
manently from "King's" to "Columbia." 

Brown (the "Providence" or the "Rhode Island" 
College, as styled at first) was founded in the Roger 
Williams, or Baptist, faith, so widely prevalent in the 
Rhode Island colony. At the commencement of 1771, 
six seniors received their parchments; and one feature 
of the previous year had been a piece from Homer 
spoken by a boy of the grammar school only nine years 
old ; for Brown, like other colleges of that day, had her 
preparatory department. 

Dartmouth originated in Dr. Wheelock's transfer 
of his Indian school from Connecticut to Hanover, New 
Hampshire; and no little jealousy was aroused at Yale 
when this new seminary announced its readiness not 
only to teach Indians, but to train white missionaries 
for their conversion ; nor this alone, but, under license 
of its liberal provincial charter, to exercise the functions 
of a college by instructing all who might apply, red or 
pale-faced, in humanities, the arts and sciences. Young 
men, especially from eastern Connecticut and the region 
of Wheelock's earlier labors, went consequently to Dart- 
mouth in preference to Yale itself during the seventies. 

^Lord Dunmore and General Gage were prominent in critical 
years at King's commencement exercises, which purposely left 
political subjects out of the programme. 



228 AMERICANS OF 1776 

In 1772 both of Dartmouth's graduates were from Con- 
necticut; in 1773, five out of six; and so it continued 
for several years. John PhilHps of Exeter was prom- 
inent among the eastern benefactors both of Dartmouth 
College and of Exeter Academy.^ 

The usual degrees in course were conferred by our 
American colleges in these early times, but not, as a 
rule, the honorary doctorates. Seniors, when gradu- 
ating, were made bachelors of arts, and three years 
later advanced to masters. The usual grade of medical 
honor was bestowed upon those who took full courses 
at the schools in Philadelphia or New York; so that 
America had her M.D.'s. As to degrees purely hono- 
rary, Harvard, far back in 1692, had made Increase 
Mather a doctor of divinity; but that case stood as 
exceptional for nearly eighty years, during the long 
period of submissive allegiance to the mother country. 
Smith, of college presidents, had been made a doctor 
of divinity in 1759 by Oxford University; Wither- 
spoon brought over a Scotch degree of similar grade. 
In 1770 Oxford conferred its D.D. upon two eminent 
clergymen of the Established Church in these colonies, 
William Peters of Philadelphia and Mather Byles of 
Boston; whereupon the latter, who was equally re- 
nowned in that day for his witticisms and Tory politics, 

^Dartmouth celebrated her second commencement, in 1772, 
after a strenuous fashion. The governor of New Hampshire 
was present at the exercises ; and to the people present, num- 
bering some hundreds, there were distributed by his order an 
ox roasted whole, bread and a hogshead of liquor. The 
press relates that these common folk partook of the executive 
liberality with a decency and decorum that astounded the gen- 
tlemen present — so unlike the populace of other countries. 
M. G., 1772. 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 229 

remarked, apropos of the rising passion for non-im- 
portation in his vicinity, that he expected soon to find 
degrees turned out in America as a home product. He 
was not mistaken; for Harvard, at its commencement 
the very next summer, revived audaciously the sacred 
doctorate, bestowing it upon one of its own Congre- 
gational faith, Nathan Appleton, pastor of the church 
at Cambridge. Nor was this all, for at the commence- 
ment exercises in 1773 two more doctors of divinity 
were announced, Locke, the new president, and Rev. 
Samuel Mather; besides which Professor John Win- 
throp of the faculty, a man renowned for learning and 
liberal attainments, was made an LL.D., the first 
person at Harvard, and probably the first in all 
America, to receive such native distinction. Revolu- 
tion and independence relaxed the conservatism of 
other colleges in this respect; though when Yale first 
conferred an honorary degree the General Assembly of 
Connecticut thought it a usurpation and unwarranted 
by the college charter. Washington, it is well known, 
was made by Harvard a doctor of laws in 1776, soon 
after the British evacuated Boston; and Chastellux 
mentions with pleasure eight years later a like con- 
spicuous honor that he himself now received from 
William and Mary. 

In soliciting benefactions, the heads of our several 
colleges bestowed something of that same assiduous 
ingenuity which in our own day is imposed upon such 
executives, though with more pitiful results. Smith 
of Pennsylvania and Witherspoon of Princeton kept 
up a lively competition in this respect, each making 
frequent appeal through the press in aid of his personal 
efforts. The one, after a successful trip to the mother 
country for funds, called, in 1772, for popular gifts 



230 AMERICANS OF 1776 

from Pennsylvania's neighboring colonies. The other, 
in 1769, made a begging tour of Virginia and the 
South ; and we see him in October preaching at 
Williamsburg to a good congregation and taking up a 
collection for Princeton after his sermon. Brown's 
executive the same year canvassed South Carolina for a 
similar purpose; and the fervid appeals made by Smith, 
Witherspoon and some other of our college presidents 
extended in that epoch not to our thirteen colonies 
alone, but even to British Jamaica and the remote West 
Indies. 

Harvard, whose sons and grandsons set in the Massa- 
chusetts province the grand example of systematic filial 
remembrance — which, after all, is the most desirable 
in the long run — and to whose treasury individuals at 
home or abroad had by 1780 contributed about three 
times as much in money, land, produce, plate, books 
and apparatus as government had ever granted in the 
aggregate, framed, in 1773, a deliberate scheme for 
coaxing legacies and other donations into its treasury. 
A special book was to record the names of such donors, 
and their gifts were to be reported at each commence- 
ment. A further proposal — that of inscribing their 
names in gilt letters upon the walls of the college 
chapel — was not adopted.^ Large benefactors of the 
college were further commemorated by having their 
pictures hung at Harvard Hall. When, in 1772, hand- 
some bequests came to the college under the wills of 
Ezekiel Hersey and Nicholas Boylston, the corporation, 

^Chastellux observes that in his time (1780-82). in order to 
reach the college from Boston, he had to take the ferry for 
Charlestown. and. in fact, to travel by sea and land, and pass 
through a former field of battle and an intrenched camp. He 
notes that each benciaction to the college library occupied its 
special place apart. 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 231 

besides voting its formal thanks and giving to each 
professorship a commemorative name, asked the heirs 
of each donor for his portrait, to be painted at the 
college expense. Seven years earlier was installed a 
Hancock professor of the Hebrew and Oriental 
languages, through the liberal bounty of the late 
Thomas Hancock. At the commencement exercises of 

1770 the audience were edified with a dialogue carried 
on in the Chaldaic tongue, "the first of the kind ever 
exhibited in America," and wholly the product of this 
generous foundation. Again, in the programme of 

1 77 1 was inserted a Samaritan dialogue, and in 1773 
one in Arabic. John Hancock, the nephew, was im- 
mensely popular at Harvard in these ominous years by 
reason both of his late uncle's munificence and his own. 
He was chosen treasurer of the college with great ap- 
plause; among his general gifts to alma mater were 
books for the library, carpets and wall paper; and he 
received in 1771 the distinguished honor of a standing 
invitation to dine at the college on all public occasions, 
taking his seat among the dons — "an extraordinary 
honor," observes President Quincy later in his history 
of Harvard College, "and without a parallel." 

Co-education was a feature of Pennsylvania's 
academy and college in this eighteenth century. "Over 
two hundred of both sexes," announced Dr. Smith in 
1770, "are constantly educated here on charity." And 
two years later he advertised that the board, lodging 
and washing of the average student was about $64 a 
year, while the cost was but $12 a year for education 
and firewood. Harvard and Yale competed in this era 
for students, and Yale seems sometimes to have out- 
stripped her elder institution in numbers; yet in 1768, 
as we read, over forty seniors took the baccalaureate 



232 AMERICANS OF 1776 

degree at Harvard, while at Yale the number was only 
twenty-nine. Emulous zeal, moreover, for astronomi- 
cal research was shown. Yale had an excellent refract- 
ing telescope, and did good work on the meteors; but 
while Harvard, in June, 1769, studied the transit of 
Venus, Yale, not apprised of the planet's approach, lost 
her chance. 



As to modes of higher education, America patterned 
largely upon those of England's best collegiate schools ; 
and the prevailing distinction among men of higher 
culture in those days was founded upon proficiency in 
Greek and Latin. Orators in their speeches and liter- 
ary men in their prose essays loved dearly to crack a 
Latin quotation for academic listeners or readers to 
enjoy as the mystic passwords of an exalted brother- 
hood. Matriculation needs at Harvard seem to have 
been somewhat increased in the time of President 
Locke; yet translating Cicero and declining per- 
fectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in Greek was 
the usual standard for admission. In Harvard's code, 
Christ was proclaimed the foundation of all sound 
knowledge and learning, and each student was expected 
to read the Scriptures twice daily and show his pro- 
ficiency therein. At Yale, while Latin was pursued 
through standard classic authors, no Greek for a long 
time was regularly taught but that of the New Testa- 
ment. Forensic disputations with syllogistic argument 
were in vogue both at Yale and Harvard — at first in 
Latin, but with English allowed later by way of variety. 
At Yale, President Clap developed the curriculum so 
as to give to natural philosophy and mathematics part 
of the time formerly bestowed upon logic ; and he inter- 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 233 

ested his students in the Newtonian philosophy, be- 
sides giving public lectures of his own on topics of civil 
government. Both forensics and disputations at the 
leading colleges in those times, whether as in course 
or for commencement parts, took up abstruse points of 
theology, though problems of civil government also re- 
ceived attention. As colleges gained in years and ex- 
perience, tutors, professors and even presidents were 
chosen by preference from among the alumni. 

The usual rules of academic discipline have been pre- 
served in old college codes, which were engrossed at 
first in Latin and afterwards in English. To redeem 
the time, to avoid profane language, to attend all 
lectures and recitations, and never to leave town and 
the college environs without permission — these were 
standing requirements that explained themselves. At- 
tendance upon morning and evening prayers and the 
Sunday services was also enjoined; and besides the 
spiritual good thus afforded, the daily prayers served 
as a conventional roll-call and counting of the students, 
an incentive to promptness and regularity for meals 
and rising and a powerful stimulus withal to the ideal 
of a full collegiate brotherhood — classes and faculty 
all united in devotion. Great reverence and respect to 
the faculty was inculcated, though not actually rendered 
without that respect of persons which buoyant youth, 
keen observers of their elders' weaknesses, will mani- 
fest to the end of time. All undergraduates were to 
doff the hat when their governors were about, never 
seating themselves first nor speaking to them except 
with uncovered head. Upon freshmen most of all did 
the rules of college behavior bear thus early with 
stringency. No freshman, as Harvard's laws enjoined, 
was to wear his hat in the college yard unless it rained, 



234 AMERICANS OF 1776 

hailed or snowed, provided he were on foot and had not 
his hands full. Freshmen were to consider students of 
all other classes as their seniors and accost them with 
all the outward signs of deferential respect. Yale's 
rules forbade freshmen to play with members of an 
upper class without being asked or to be familiar with 
them, even in study hours. At both institutions, and 
probably among our other colleges, as in the great 
English schools, fagging prevailed to a considerable 
extent; and youths of the class last entered were ex- 
pected to run errands for the upper students. More- 
over, as Harvard's rules expressed it, when any one 
knocked on the door of a freshman, he should immedi- 
ately open it without calling out, "Who is there?" 

Against oppression, stern discipline or inflicted hard- 
ships, rebellion will break out in college precincts as in 
the commonwealth of adults. Harvard men, in 1766, 
indignant over the poor bread given them in the com- 
mons, sought board in private families. At Yale, in 
1 77 1, the greater part of the students "eloped from 
the college" (as newspapers of the day expressed it) 
because of some dissatisfaction ; but many of them soon 
returned to duty. Private reprimand, public admoni- 
tion, suspension or expulsion might serve for a graded 
college discipline of dignity, though fines were to some 
extent imposed. For the old arrangement of placing 
students according to their social station, the modern 
alphabetical order was substituted at Yale only a few 
years earlier than at aristocratic Harvard, whose priv- 
ileged sons of the quality continued to secure the best 
chambers in the college and to help themselves first at 
commons until 1773. Sports were not in those days 
so organized as to monopolize time or divert the youth 
from serious studies ; but while match games were per- 



COLLEGES AND HIGHER EDUCATION 235 

haps unknown here in the eighteenth century, students 
took simple recreation, such as running long foot-races 
around the college grounds. Football, in its season, 
was already a game in which the sons of Eli were 
thought highly accomplished, though simply and fairly 
conducted, as compared with the present day. Hazing 
prevailed at most colleges, and other such outrages of 
remote origin ; ingenious tricks were played upon mem- 
bers of the faculty, and especially the unpopular ones; 
while at Harvard disorders became so frequent on 
quarter days, with the breaking of tutors' windows, 
that the observance of those dates was finally discon- 
tinued. Commencements, too, with the leave-taking 
of classmates, engendered lawless riot and drunkenness ; 
hence at Yale, in 1760, each candidate for a degree 
was restricted, by a faculty vote, to two gallons of wine 
for his parting entertainment. Plum cake is said to 
have done students much harm at festive entertain- 
ments of this character. 



Commencement day was in all our collegiate towns 
at that era a sort of public occasion. Its celebration 
was marked by a great display and liveliness among 
the common people such as we nowadays seldom wit- 
ness. Booths were erected along the sidewalk, and a 
disposition was shown, even among the industrial and 
illiterate of our college towns, to enjoy a general holi- 
day. The governor of the commonwealth, escorted by 
soldiery, came out to participate in the exercises, as he 
still continues to do in some States ; and the march of 
the students, gowned dignitaries, public men and in- 
vited guests for academic exercises and the bestowal 
of degrees at the church was of a unique character, as it 



236 AMERICANS OF 1776 

very largely continues to this day. Inside those sacred 
walls the programme differed very little from that 
which graduates still living can recall. Innovation, in 
fact, upon the old curriculum or upon old customs and 
ceremonies of our collegiate life came very gradually 
in America until a new and vigorous sweep of the 
besom began some thirty years ago. In colonial times, 
much more than now, commencement dinner, with its 
toasts and speeches, interested outsiders and the gen- 
eral public; and sometimes, as at Cambridge, a vocal 
and instrumental concert rounded out a memorable 
holiday. 

So once more the sacred insignia of academic author- 
ity were brought into view whenever a new college 
president was inducted into office ; seal, keys, books and 
charter were handed over to him on the platform as 
he was formally placed in the imposing but highly un- 
comfortable chair of state. In short, the Old-World 
ideals of ritualism, so jealously prohibited by our New- 
World Puritan and dissenter in matters of religion and 
the church, found still a considerable expression where 
scholastic and secular dignities alone were concerned. 



XVI 

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 

THE vivacious Chastellux had little fellow-feel- 
ing for the Sabbatarians of this New World. 
"You cannot," he writes, "travel in New 
England on Sunday but the deacons will stop your 
horse and take you to a magistrate." And he contrasts 
French observance of that day as a gay and joyous 
holiday, with the wretched idleness and listlessness, as 
he terms it, of a Sunday passed by the people of the 
United States. 

In vain has been such criticism. As well seek to 
uproot the palisades along the Hudson as to persuade 
Americans to celebrate the Lord's day after Parisian 
fashion. Not all the laxness of religious faith, the 
atheism and agnosticism, the reactionary impulse from 
intensity of work to intensity of recreation, which these 
last hundred years have wrought in American life, has 
greatly changed the prevalent disposition to keep the 
Lord's day holy, in a sense — to make it, at least, a day 
of rest and outward sobriety rather than of boisterous 
pleasure-seeking. When in Rome we do as the Romans 
do, but when in America, American opinion sets the 
fashion. More than a quiet desecration of the Sabbath 
is scarcely tolerated. 

The motive for a strict Sunday observance among 
our colonial progenitors is traceable to the Christian 
and Protestant character of America's early settle- 



238 AMERICANS OF 1776 

ments. It was not the quest of gain or the love of 
adventure that brought them over in bands to these 
Atlantic wilds so much as a deep desire to escape the 
bonds of church and state, which defined their humbler 
condition at home, and to solve in this New World great 
problems that interested them. Colonization here was 
coincident with Reformation in Europe, and the pop- 
ular struggle was for greater individual freedom in 
matters both of religious and secular rule. If not toler- 
ant themselves in all respects, our fathers sought tolera- 
tion for what most deeply interested them; if non- 
conformists in a sense, they wished conformity to their 
own dissent. Puritans, who gave much stability to the 
political forces developing here, felt deeply themselves 
the seriousness of human life and endeavor. Gayety 
or light-heartedness, such as befits a people for enjoying 
recurring holidays, goes rather with a fixedness of in- 
ferior social caste, monotonous toil for a living and the 
absence of all broad opportunity for bettering greatly 
the conditions of birth. Most of all, it involves a child- 
like irresponsibility for the direction of affairs. Who 
can estimate how greatly man is indebted for his happi- 
ness in the chance occasions of life to the consciousness 
that the operations of the weather, which help or mar 
a projected plan, must go on without his intervention 
or conclusive forecast? Hence in Continental Europe 
was seen a joyful holiday abandonment on the part of 
a populace, such as Americans had far too serious a 
task to share. Like Sancho Panza's wife, who gave 
all her big words to the priest, they of contemporary 
France, Spain or Italy cast their cares upon their tem- 
poral and spiritual masters and confessed their own 
littleness. 

"Merrie England" herself, in the age before 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 239 

America was discovered, was more of a child in popular 
pastimes than it has ever been since the days of the 
Protestant martyrs. It was a tale often told during 
the era we are considering/ that when in the mother 
country Charles I. issued his proclamation authorizing 
sports and amusements throughout the realm on Sun- 
days, as in the olden times, he required the royal mandate 
to be read in the churches. Many of the reluctant 
clergy complied with the order, some refused, while 
others hurried through the document in tones as in- 
audible as possible. But one minister, whose congre- 
gation had expected no such compliance, did, to their 
great surprise, read the proclamation through dis- 
tinctly. He followed it, however, with a reading, 
equally distinct, of the fourth commandment, "Re- 
member that thou keep holy the Sabbath day," and so 
on. "Brethren," he then proceeded, "I have laid before 
you the commandment of your king and the command- 
ment of your God. I leave it to yourselves to judge 
which of the two ought rather to be observed." 



Life here was no bagatelle for jesting. It required 
courage enough to take ground against prevailing 
tenets, however reverently. Outside Pennsylvania, a 
Quaker or a Papist in these colonies had hardly a safe 
refuge against persecution. In Virginia, very close to 
the Revolution, Baptists were imprisoned for their non- 
conforming extravagance, and preached from grated 
windows to those who gathered outside. "What!" 
said Patrick Henry in his maiden plea as a jury lawyer 
on their behalf, shaming the prosecution, "that these 

*IV Franklin's Works, 435. 



240 AMERICANS OF 1776 

men are to be tried as for misdemeanor for preaching 
the Gospel of the Son of God!" 

Thus, then, did society rest from secular toil, 
while religious worship and meditation marked the day. 
Even Saturday night was one of Sabbath preparation 
as far as possible — a "tub night" for the young chil- 
dren, with subdued amusement, if any, for their elders ; 
while Sunday evening, though it might be argued that 
the Sabbath ended at six o'clock, was the favorite time 
for sparking or family visits. And for these latter 
purposes it availed not a little that cleanliness had pre- 
ceded godliness, and that the best Sunday clothes were 
in evidence. Riding was chiefly to church or meeting 
in rural communities, and the bright Sabbath stillness 
was broken only by the church-going bell. To meet 
once a week as neighbors in the great congregation was 
of itself inspiring. 

"How sweet a Sabbath thus to spend, 
In hope of one that ne'er shall end." 

Over the irreligious minority of their own inhabitants 
the native press held constantly the rod. "They who 
drive their carriages on the Lord's day," it was laid 
down,* "must at least walk gently their horses when 
they pass a meeting-house ; otherwise we shall complain 
of them as a nuisance." 



The Congregational Church, which thus early 
formed the establishment of the Eastern States or 
colonies, was rigid, for the most part, in its Calvinism. 
Presbyterians flourished among the Middle and South- 

*M. G., 1771. 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 241 

ern colonies, the Scotch-Irish settlers in rural and 
mountainous regions furnishing the sturdiest element 
of that faith. Virginia had modelled early a church 
establishment upon that of the mother country, the 
Bishop of London having a perfunctory oversight ; and 
so, too, after the expulsion of the Stuarts, had Mary- 
land, rejecting the broader tolerance proposed by Lord 
Baltimore. The old parish subdivision of counties, in 
preference to the New England town system, obtains 
in Maryland and Virginia to this day. For Congrega- 
tional and Presbyterian supply in the ministry, the sev- 
eral provinces provided as far as possible in their local 
colleges; but our Episcopal churches came under the 
nominal supervision of the Bishop of London, and every 
one of their clergy was examined and ordained in Eng- 
land at a considerable personal cost. Populous Penn- 
sylvania, under the wise direction of her great founder, 
encouraged churches of all denominations; and there 
alone among our colonies Quakers themselves made a 
respectable show in point of numbers and influence. 
Among the other Protestant bodies of those times were 
the Baptists, whose chief strength, perhaps, was in 
Rhode Island ; the Dutch Reformed of New York and 
the French Huguenots in South Carolina. 

For powdered heads and grandeur of costume as 
displayed in the city churches. Episcopalians and Pres- 
byterians (or Congregationalists) took the lead. Few 
wigs or velvet suits were to be seen among the Baptists ; 
while Quakers dressed in the plain drab of their order. 
How many evangelical ministers, churches and com- 
municants were in America at the outbreak of Revolu- 
tion cannot be determined, but the proportion they bore 
to the population was far less than in later times.^ Nor 
^Baird's "Religion in America." 



242 AMERICANS OF 1776 

should this seem strange when the sparseness of those 
broad settlements is considered. Methodism with its 
itinerant preaching had hardly yet taken the field, and 
as remote homes were compelled to dispense practically 
with the physician or surgeon, so, too, did they bear 
privation in gospel privileges. But the Bible was daily 
read at the hearth and fireside. The earnest parish 
clergyman extended far his visitations, and people jour- 
neyed miles by chaise or on horseback to attend an 
occasional public worship. 



I have spoken of an evangelical or Protestant min- 
istry in the thirteen colonies. The Roman Catholic 
Church, so powerful in our own day, with its historic 
unity, its immense organism, its devoted hierarchy and 
an adaptation far better to the tastes and exigencies of 
American life than formerly, was almost literally out- 
lawed during colonial times, except in Pennsylvania. 
And the inspiration of intolerance in that respect came 
from England herself, after the accession of William 
and Mary. Liberty of conscience, "except to Papists," 
was the expression of the Massachusetts charter of 
1 69 1. Jesuitical influence, a pompous ritual and cere- 
monies, the Bible in an unknown tongue and the priestly 
control of laymen's consciences were all hateful to 
the Protestantism which peopled our wilderness. On 
each recurring 5th of November a stuffed image of the 
Pope was borne about in efiigy and burned ; and in the 
Stamp-Act riots, Pope, devil and the obnoxious min- 
ions of the Crown shared popular execration alike and 
were consigned to the flames together. When Sam- 
uel Adams held forth to the people of Philadelphia on 
the steps of Independence Hall, just after the Decla- 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 243 

ration had been adopted, he denounced Popery and 
monarchy together as the twin foes of popular 
freedom. 

Many of us still living have seen spasmodic returns 
of such popular odium, with Roman churches and 
clergy assaulted in our chief cities, and Roman con- 
vents burned to the ground by mobs whose rallying 
cry was "Americans to rule America." And among 
our forefathers, in the age I am describing, the opinion 
strongly and constantly prevailed that there was some- 
thing foreign, outlandish and tyrannous in Rome's 
ecclesiastical methods. A scorching sermon, printed 
about 1767, set forth *'the idolatry and damnable 
heresies and abominable superstitions and crying wick- 
ednesses of the Romish Church;" and Harvard in- 
cluded that topic of denunciation among its annual 
Dudleian lectures. We see the Virginia Gazette com- 
plaining in 1775 that the imported British soldiery 
sought to force these colonists to submit to "Popery and 
slavery." 

It is estimated, however, that at the date of the Revo- 
lution there were about fifty Roman Catholic Churches 
in all the colonies, and about half that number of 
Romish priests. Most worshippers of that faith were 
humble Irish, who could afford but little outlay. 
Strange did it seem to tolerant Philadelphia to behold, 
by 1737, a chapel whose doors stood open not only upon 
church fasts and festivals, but every day in the week. 
Our French alliance aided Romanism in Baltimore. 
When Count Rochambeau returned northward with his 
French troops from victorious Yorktown, he left one 
of his legions in Baltimore until the close of the war. 
An unfinished Catholic chapel was here opened for their 
benefit, and mass was celebrated on occasion, a French 



244 AMERICANS OF 1776 

military band accompanying the service with their 
music.^ 



Not only was Rome's hierarchy dreaded in colonial 
America, but to a large majority of the inhabitants 
even the moderate name of Bishop was obnoxious. 
Happily for the public peace, our Episcopal clergy were 
moderate and evangelical for the most part. They 
shifted the surplice before mounting their preaching 
tubs, and wore in the pulpit that black Geneva gown 
with which so many of our dissenting clergy liked to 
adorn themselves. They disregarded the church cal- 
endar, observed Sundays only, avoided mediaeval prac- 
tices and made of our English liturgy a service bald 
and tedious to prolixity. When the project of sending 
over an American bishop was broached about the 
middle of the eighteenth century a large number of 
that clergy, particularly in Virginia and her neighbor- 
ing provinces, were found indifferent or averse to the 
project, as well as were the laity. The Virginia House 
of Burgesses voted in 1771 their thanks to the clergy 
of that province who had opposed this "pernicious 
project." Meanwhile our colonists at the eastward had 
taken up the discussion. Such divines, on the one side, 
as Apthorp, Cutler and Chandler were stoutly con- 
fronted on the other by Mayhew, Chauncey and others. 
There were pamphlets of "appeal" and of "appeal 
answered." One popular objection put forward was 
that colonists would be obliged to maintain bishops, 
when they could hardly maintain themselves, still less 
the churches and clergy of their own faith. Prejudice 
was inflamed, moreover, against any strengthening of 

•Scharf's "Baltimore." 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 245 

ranks and orders ; "no lords, spiritual or temporal," was 
the cry. Yet it was not only the lords spiritual who 
might have been feared in a religious establishment. 
Blackstone, the recluse who was found on Boston soil 
when the Puritans came to settle there, received invi- 
tation to attend their Congregational worship. "I came 
from England," he replied, "because I did not like the 
lord bishops; but I cannot join work with you because 
I would not be under the lord brethren." 

The Methodists, so strong a body in our own century, 
had not yet fairly organized. But the Wesley brothers 
had visited America; and their eloquent young associ- 
ate, Whitefield, who first came over in 1740, travelled 
north and south for years as an itinerant preacher and 
missionary, dying in Massachusetts in 1770, while in 
the plenitude of his fame. He and the "new lights" 
school of evangelists to which he belonged — for the 
Church of England, to its later regret, had suspended 
him and the Wesleys from the ministry because of their 
non-conforming modes — preached earnestly in our 
churches, of one denomination or another, on individual 
work for individual salvation, and raised dormant and 
complacent congregations to new zeal and new effort 
in personal religion. Dancing schools were discon- 
tinued and balls and concert rooms shut up, while thou- 
sands thronged eagerly to hear Whitefield discourse 
of the higher life at church or in the open fields. He 
was a prodigy of eloquence, and devoted to his work; 
not a leader, perhaps, in theological thought or dis- 
cussion, but unquestionably the greatest pulpit orator 
of his times in the English tongue. He did not hold 
camp meetings, however, nor apply lay stimulants to 
a popular excitement, but inspired and entranced by his 
own fervent preaching. 



246 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Jonathan Edwards, New England born and pastor 
among the Congregationalists, must not be forgotten; 
nor the powerful revival he accomplished during that 
era in Connecticut and Massachusetts. His exposition 
of God's wrath and the impending terrors of the second 
death made sinners quake and tremble before him. 
"Fond, impious man," whose doom he pictured, seemed 
to him like some bloated black spider, hanging by his 
thread of self-sufficiency, whom a repulsive Deity 
would cast into the depths of a bottomless abyss. 
Edwards was something of a naturalist, scrutinizing 
the visible signs of the lower creation about him; and 
the sketches of sermons, still extant, which he used to 
carry with him into his pulpit, at first written upon 
fair sheets of paper, but in later life upon the blank 
pages of old letters and scraps, cannot well be read 
by the average eye without the aid of a microscope. 



As to our clergy generally in the Revolutionary age, 
we find them differently regarded for temporal func- 
tions in different jurisdictions. New York, Delaware, 
Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia each showed in 
framing its independent State constitution a real dis- 
like of clergymen in politics. To be sure, chaplains 
in the military service or for public secular occasions 
were generally approved ; but as to having ministers 
sit in a legislature or hold civil office, that was another 
matter. Dr. Witherspoon of New Jersey (and he a 
college president, not settled over a congregation) sup- 
plies the exceptional instance of one, ordained and en- 
rolled in the ministry, who sat as a delegate in the 
Continental Congress. But some of our thirteen col- 
onies, Massachusetts notably, took a different view. 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 247 

Her constitution of 1783 drew the line rather against 
Harvard College and its instructors; it was these 
who were forbidden to sit in the General Court. In 
truth, the influence of the New England clergy in public 
affairs at that day and long after was very great. The 
town-meeting system favored a settled parish minister 
in that respect, for in such gatherings he had a voice 
and vote with his fellow-citizens; and as a townsman 
of superior talents and education, stable and fixed in 
his domicile, the rearer of a large family with the rest, 
and a ready speaker besides, he was often put forward 
in politics to give strong direction. In this eastern 
section we see the ambassador for Christ chosen fre- 
quently to serve as a town delegate in convention or 
the legislature. But his chief political influence was in 
his own pulpit ; for there he had abundant opportunity, 
which he improved, to discuss the affairs of the day 
and give his own bias to public opinion. His fast-day 
sermon discoursed of political sins and shortcomings; 
that of Thanksgiving recounted political blessings. 
Civil magistrates, and representatives both civil and 
military, sought their chosen clergymen to gain inspira- 
tion and guidance for the work before them. At New 
England celebrations the sermon was a chief feature. 
In Massachusetts, for spring "election day," the 
preacher was chosen in rotation, by the people's repre- 
sentatives one year and by the royal governor the next. 
The fervent recognition of a Divine intervention 
on the popular behalf marked the age I am describing. 
"It is the Lord's doing," proclaimed the clergy as inde- 
pendence approached. Sermons, like other pamphlets, 
were kept constantly on sale or offered for subscription. 
Among both clergy and the laity we see in the letters 
and diaries of this age, as well as in the press, a strain 



248 AMERICANS OF 1776 

of pious ejaculation, with moralizing upon passing 
events. The churches, among other public bodies, 
would proffer their congratulations to temporal rulers, 
expecting formal response. Listeners at church took 
down sermons in shorthand. Among Presbyterians 
the custom prevailed, as we still see it observed in the 
Church of Scotland, of keeping Bibles in the pew and 
carefully verifying the text and scripture citations of 
each Sunday's discourse. Sermons were lengthy and 
to a large extent ranged under consecutive heads for 
developing the idea of the text, after which came corre- 
sponding heads for application by way of improvement. 
Many a preacher inverted his hour-glass as the dis- 
course proceeded. 

Congregational clergy were settled locally by the 
local congregation, and the New England theory was 
that of independent churches and independent ministers 
of the faith. Presbyterians yielded more to a governing 
supervision, and held synods in Philadelphia, which 
considered the general advantage of the body in various 
colonies. The Episcopal Church, we have seen, had no 
resident bishop, and hence no positive local supervision. 
Yet the Episcopal clergy of adjacent provinces (prob- 
ably without lay representation) met at seasons for 
mutual counsel and encouragement; as in 1768, when 
those of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey 
assembled in New York City.^ Consecration abroad 
and an English common prayer made a bond of union. 
There were no ecclesiastical courts in America; but 
Presbyterians were guided by Scottish precedents, 

*That gathering, however, was largely for uniting efforts to 
procure the appointment of a bishop by the Crown, and no gen- 
eral church convention for the colonies seems ever to have taken 
place. 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 249 

while Methodists, as they developed, took their rules 
from John Wesley. Quakers and Baptists made little 
acknowledgment of external influence or dictation. 
Among the Congregationalists of Massachusetts there 
was a fraternity of the churches, but it disclaimed all 
exercise of authority. 

In working out, much later, a general toleration and 
the voluntary system of support, the religious bodies I 
have described combined in the various commonwealths 
according to circumstances. Episcopalians, as well as 
Baptists, felt the burden of supporting Congregational 
ministers and churches in New England; while in 
Maryland and Virginia Baptists and Presbyterians 
united against the favoritism of tithes and glebes which 
the transplanted mother church had enjoyed. Congre- 
gationalism in its religious polity wove admirably into 
the New England pattern for temporal affairs, since 
local self-government was its essence. 

For the support of aged and infirm clergy and the 
widows and orphans of such as died in the service of the 
English church, missionary provision was aided in the 
mother country ; but in our churches of independent 
tenets such relief was precarious, and varied with the 
local regard in such matters. Clergymen of advancing 
years were assisted by colleagues, or "partnership 
clergymen," as they were called, who, like the young 
coadjutor of a church bishop in our day, might look 
forward to a full succession whenever a final vacancy 
should occur. The tenure of colonial clergy in New 
England towns promised great stability for each pious 
incumbent who could keep down dissension and strife. 
Pastors were known to serve here for fifty years or 
more over one congregation, and such was the strength 
of social and family ties that the old pastor not unfre- 



250 AMERICANS OF 1776 

quently handed over his charge to a son or son-in-law in 
the faith. In old Virginia, parish vacancies were seen 
advertised, which set forth the salary as something 
exclusive of perquisites. Preachers, as a rule, were 
males, of course, in those days, and a sedate and edu- 
cated ministry was preferred for the most part. Boy 
evangelists were unknown; and the inspired tinker or 
cobbler was most likely a Baptist innovation, for congre- 
gations made up of simple folk. Among Quakers, 
or Friends, however, men or women arose in the meet- 
ing, as the spirit moved, and there was a noted woman 
preacher of this faith, Rachel Wilson, who went about 
between New Haven and New York as an itinerant. 
Whenever a new church was "embodied" in a town and 
a pastor installed, all was conducted (as the press of 
the day would phrase it) "with the greatest decency 
and order." 

Anything like the calendar of the mediaeval church 
Americans of this age inclined, as Protestants and re- 
formers, to disregard. Christmas day itself had been 
constantly under the ban in Massachusetts. Nor even 
among our churchmen could the Lenten season find yet 
a Protestant observance, nor Good Friday and Easter 
bind Christian hearts together. For merriment and 
good cheer, so far as permissible. New Yorkers fixed 
upon New Year's, while New England set up a Novem- 
ber celebration of its own named Thanksgiving. 
Church feasts and fasts were condemned and contro- 
verted by Presbyterian and Congregationalist alike; 
while Episcopalians themselves reduced such celebra- 
tion to a limited standard. To attend divine service on 
week days was not to be thought of, save for bald 
observances which had not church tradition back of 
them. Notable, however, in this latter respect was 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 251 

Boston's Thursday lecture, which had been observed 
there from the first settlement of this town until the 
British occupation. After Washington raised the siege 
here, in 1776, Bostonians gathered once more to renew 
that sacred institution, our grave commander-in-chief 
lending his own devout presence to the occasion. He 
was met, with his general officers and the invited guests, 
at the council chamber, attended by the sheriff with his 
wand, the councillors, the selectmen and others. The 
whole procession marched to the old brick meeting- 
house near by, where Rev. Dr. Eliot preached from 
Isaiah 33 : 20} 



A few words may be added touching our church edi- 
fices and their arrangements in our Revolutionary age. 
Of church architecture at that date in America we may 
fairly judge by the specimens still left in our older 
States ; among the best of them, and the most character- 
istic, being King's Chapel, the Old South and Christ 
Church in Boston, St. Paul's Chapel in New York and 
Christ Church in Philadelphia. In remote New Eng- 
land towns, moreover, we may still see the big, painted, 
wooden sanctuary perched in a commanding place and 
guarding its old cemetery, while in the Middle or 
Southern colony stands its rural contemporary of more 
durable brick, inspiring equal reverence. Such temples 
of worship were severely plain in outward and interior 
aspect, with singers' gallery opposite the pulpit, great 
side galleries for boys and indentured servants, and 
pews (a modern institution), high backed, supplied 
with doors and fastenings and severely exclusive in ap- 

'N. E. C. A dinner at the "Bunch of Grapes" followed at 
the public expense, with appropriate toasts of joy. 



252 AMERICANS OF 1776 

pearance, in which gathered severally the large fam- 
ilies of the locality for public worship. 

Only the Church of England houses of worship imi- 
tated Catholic Christendom in those times by applying 
names like Christ, St. Paul's or Trinity, to designate 
the society; and most commonly congregations in a 
town or parish were distinguished as numerically the 
first or the second, and so on, of a particular faith. In 
the early settlements of New England it often happened 
that the local house of worship served for town gather- 
ings besides, where politics were discussed; and hence 
the familiar term "meeting-house" as applied by the 
common folk, with the phrase "going to meeting" to 
attend the Sabbath worship. Many a patriotic gather- 
ing took place in such houses of prayer and praise. In 
the Old South orators denounced standing armies on 
each recurring anniversary of the Boston massacre. 
And in Virginia, too, it was the parish church at Rich- 
mond where Patrick Henry made his immortal appeal 
for "liberty or death." 

To the reforming, protesting spirit of our evangelical 
religion a century and a half ago churches or cathe- 
drals of the mediaeval pattern with ornate interior were 
offensive. Church edifices still to be seen in London 
of the Wren pattern furnished models for our religion- 
ists of the New World. Favored by the needs of Eng- 
land's metropolis after the great fire. Sir Christopher 
rose to pre-eminence there by the new buildings of 
modern styles which he introduced, and most of all by 
the new St. Paul's Cathedral, with its massive dome, 
which rose from the ashes of its predecessor upon his- 
toric Ludgate Hill. Yet that costly and magnificent 
church — the largest Protestant temple of worship in the 
world to this day — expended its chief resources upon 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 253 

outside grandeur, and until about thirty years ago its 
blank gray walls and interior seemed to repel emotion. 
Still more so was it with the image-breaking spirit 
which inspired our stern Protestant worshippers of the 
thirteen colonies. Imposing effects, if there were such, 
were chiefly displayed outside, for within the walls 
pictures, sculpture, high altars, ritual processions and 
ceremonies were strenuously forbidden. Such adorn- 
ment as might at all consist with the orthodox spirit 
of the day did not extend beyond tablets of the com- 
mandments with letters in flourishing script, plush 
velvet pulpit cushions, cherubs' heads and wings, a pipe 
organ in the loft or a glass chandelier at the centre of 
the broad aisle. Nor were even such ornamental ap- 
pendages common. Churches on bleak sites, which had 
been kept closed all the week, were not easily warmed 
for the Sabbath in winter time by the moderate stoves 
and heating apparatus then in use.^ 

With the mediaeval tower less in vogue, current 
ecclesiastical taste favored sharp steeples or else the 
round-topped belfry, these running to a height which 
would well rear the sacred pile above the ordinary 
abodes of home and business. Old Trinity in New 
York, a parish already wealthy for its real estate pos- 
sessions, had a steeple 175 feet high and ornamental of 
aspect. Old Christ Church in Philadelphia paid, by the 
proceeds of a lottery, for erecting a steeple, nearly 
twenty years after the body of the church was built. 
Copper-plate pictures of Boston at this period show the 
buildings of that town surmounted by pointed steeples, 

^Progress had been made with stoves for keeping one's ex- 
tremities warm during the long hours of worship ; but Franklin, 
in 1773, still found occasion to commend foot-stoves and bear- 
skin cases for the legs, more majorum. 



254 AMERICANS OF 1776 

picketed close together, as though ready to impale the 
host of Lucifer should such adversaries fall once more 
from heaven. 

As silent guide and monitor to the inhabitants of the 
sober little community, the church with its lofty top- 
ping undertook three general functions : ( i ) Its bell 
rang out for fire and the curfew, or to summon and cele- 
brate on public occasions; it sounded for joy; it tolled 
for funerals or for public sorrow ; and all this in addi- 
tion to the Sunday summons. (2) Its vane, perched on 
the pinnacle, pointed the direction of the wind and 
aided man's forecast of the weather; and were the de- 
vice a cockerel, a grasshopper, an arrow or something 
still more fanciful, the eyes of mankind grew used to 
watching it. (3) Its clock at the belfry's base, though 
as yet a feature for America somewhat uncommon, 
regulated the daily life and rounded out a wholesome 
influence through the week. In the push and turmoil 
of modern life we open our hearts less readily to im- 
pressions for good such as moved the imagination of 
our sober ancestors amid more simple surroundings. 
Religion in our own day has to arrest, if it may, by 
more sedulous endeavor, the alluring schemes of 
worldly indulgence or ambition which tend to absorb 
men's souls and draw them from contemplation of the 
life hereafter. Steeples themselves dwarf into insignifi- 
cance in our noisy and crowded cities, overtopped, as 
we so often behold them in recent years, by the high 
Babels of finance and business. 



A 



XVII 

LIBRARIES AND CLUBS 

FEW words as to libraries, those life-long edu- 
cators of the young and old of both sexes, 
whose opportunities in our own later times are 
large and constant. Each of the colonial colleges I have 
described^ had its own library, more or less ample, be- 
sides scientific implements ; chiefly, however, for the im- 
mediate use of its students and faculty for the time 
being. It is said that America's best library and philo- 
sophical apparatus of the age perished in the flames 
when Harvard Hall was burned down in 1764. But 
that hall was rebuilt substantially, as it still stands, 
shortly before the Revolution; and Massachusetts be- 
stowed upon the college in 1778 hundreds of books 
confiscated from Tory refugees as an outfit for the 
future. Princeton's library and philosophical appara- 
tus were much depleted while New Jersey was the seat 
of British hostilities. 

Public or general libraries as we have them so abun- 
dantly to-day, the offspring of local taxation or a rich 
person's munificence, had no existence in America in 
colonial days ; but they whose means and tastes per- 
mitted it filled their shelves at home with such books as 
personal gift or purchase might bring together, and 
loaned to their less favored friends and dependents. 
Except, indeed, for the Bible and the almanac, people 
pored over print far less than they do now; and the 

^Ante, p. 216. 



256 AMERICANS OF 1776 

books they read were more for self -improvement, self- 
edification or for storing the mind in the practical pur- 
suits of divinity, law, medicine or politics, than for 
any mere recreation or light amusement. But there 
were already co-operative or subscription libraries in 
the leading colonial centres; and chiefly to the public- 
spirited Franklin we owe the origin of such establish- 
ments. Out of the club, or Junto, of young mechanics in 
Philadelphia, who had brought their private books to- 
gether in a single room for mutual convenience, grew, 
in 1 73 1, the primitive scheme of an organized subscrip- 
tion library, such as first developed in Franklin's 
adopted city and thence spread rapidly to other chief 
towns and provinces. Its fundamental idea of support 
was that of a solid sum paid to constitute full member- 
ship; with a yearly subscription, besides, by way of 
current assessment for the annual privilege of taking 
out books.^ No better plan was ever devised for stimu- 
lating reading and self-culture in a community which 
finds no wealthy benefactor and is itself too poor to 
levy a tax for such purposes. 

General circulating libraries were also maintained to 
some extent in this early age, and such agencies, to be 
self-sustaining, were naturally the enterprise of indi- 
vidual booksellers. John Mein, a Boston bookseller, 
undertook in 1765 to loan books in this manner; "a 
scheme," as he advertised it, "hitherto unattempted in 
New England."^ This circulating library was chiefly 
for Mein's f ellow-Bostonians ; but persons living in the 

*The Philadelphia library began (as Franklin relates in his 
Autobiography) with fifty subscribers of forty shillings each, to 
start with, and ten shillings a year while the term of association 
should last. 

*The rate he proposed was £i, 8s. a year; catalogues were 
issued at is. extra; and subscribers were requested to send a 



LIBRARIES AND CLUBS 257 

country might pay double and get two books at a time ; 
being, moreover, at the special cost of conveyance, 
whatever that might be. Philadelphia in these years 
had also a bookstore, kept by a man named Nicola, who 
advertised 700 choice books for hire, of the most ap- 
proved authors.^ 

Books and a good library have supplied the chief or, 
indeed, the only means of education of many a man 
struggling upward in life with the weight of early pov- 
erty and privation to encumber him. But more than 
this, such silent aids to knowledge and self-improve- 
ment avail many a college or university man whose 
routine opportunities have somehow failed of their full 
results. We discuss, sometimes, the question whether 
the higher education for active life should be longer or 
shorter; whether one, two or three years ought to be 
taken away from the period of college undergraduate 
work, to be tacked on to a person's high-school course 
at one extreme or to that of his professional school at 
the other. But it is not, believe me, the higher training 
of a few years, more or less, that fits one for a really 
useful career. At the college, the university or the 
professional school the youth of talent and promise 
gains choice and stimulating companionship at the plastic 
period of life, measures himself against great contem- 
poraries while he and they are young, and masters the 
various schemes which may enable him to choose and 
steer his course over the wide sea of human endeavor 
and achievement. And yet, for real success and ac- 

list of six or eight books at a time, so as to be sure to get some 
one of the books wanted. M. G., 1765. 

*His terms of subscription were $2 per year, to be paid 
half-yearly, and no credit given. But credit was actually given, 
and general duns for payment were sometimes advertised in the 
local press. 



258 AMERICANS OF 1776 

complishment, the labor before him is that of a well- 
bestowed lifetime, beginning with his youth; and not 
only does the strong incentive to study come to many 
of us at some stage of experience after the brief college 
years have actually ended, but all study and all higher 
education should, in order to produce perfect fruition, 
continue as long as one's mental powers are capable 
of production and exercise at all, and until death comes 
or the collapse of that intellectual capacity to which 
nature sets a limit, but no definite one. 

Among the maxims inscribed upon the marble en- 
trance hall of that noble library building in Washington 
which confronts our great temple of national legislation 
on Capitol Hill, is this : "The true university is a col- 
lection of books." To a statement so broad we may not 
readily subscribe ; but, at all events, it may well be said 
that books remain our permanent tutors and instructors 
long after the university or professional school, with its 
curriculum, has been left behind. 



Distinct from those private organizations of which 
we find so many nowadays for objects religious, politi- 
cal or philanthropic, is the club proper, whose chief aim 
is good fellowship. Exclusion, segregation is here the 
vital principle ; and however far-reaching may be asso- 
ciate aims for the general good, it is mutual improve- 
ment alone or mutual pleasure that is more directly 
sought ; while the admission of outsiders to the con- 
fraternity becomes a matter of strict patronage, selec- 
tion and favor. This very idea of keeping out the 
common herd gives zest to the personal and piquant 
enjoyment of a club, somewhat as in the closely drawn 
circle of home and family or the cliques of fashion. 



LIBRARIES AND CLUBS 259 

Everything in our present age tends to organism and 
the co-operation of individuals wherever something 
grand is to be accompHshed; but it was far less so in 
the days of our Revolutionary forefathers. Then the 
first strong bond was that of one's own household, and 
next came the fraternity of congenial neighbors. Lines 
of travel were circumscribed; wives gossiped at the 
back door of each other's houses, and men who sought 
easy companionship in the hours of idleness drew up 
their horses on the road to discourse, or lounged in the 
inn bar-room, or sat about the stove together at some 
country grocer's. Of social clubs, such as we find them 
nowadays in our chief cities, with costly buildings and 
sumptuous equipment, all for privacy and pleasure — 
homes, in a sense, for the homeless few and favored, 
but rather disintegrating in their influence upon the 
domestic and married life — of these there were none 
whatever in America at that early period. For, first of 
all, we had not communities rich enough or populous 
enough to support such style. Men were busy, simple 
and domestic in their tastes, and the idle and pampered 
sons of luxury w^ere wanting. 

Yet at one stage of development or another the club 
principle, which combines choice spirits for the common 
pursuit of some desired end, selfish or unselfish, in- 
doors or out-of-doors, is as old as mixed society itself. 
It may be a literary junto or a beefsteak club or a jockey 
club; it may hire a room for meetings, patronize an 
eating-house or build a cheap rustic lodge for sporting 
convenience, if no more. What Dr. Johnson defined as 
"an assemblage of good fellows, meeting under social 
conditions," may have combined early for various ele- 
vating objects which develop incidentally a personal 
companionship, or it may have proposed simply those 



26o AMERICANS OF 1776 

coarser delights of eating, drinking, gaming or hunt- 
ing. In Great Britain, from times quite remote, was 
the industrial guild, with funds available for objects 
fraternal, not the least of which was an annual banquet 
for the feeding and guzzling of the elect. But the prim- 
itive club met usually in temporary quarters; and 
whether in Europe or America, the permanent and inde- 
pendent club-house with its own restaurant did not 
appear until after the wars of the first Napoleon. 

Table gatherings, with eating, drinking and conver- 
sation, took place at intervals, however, in these more 
simple days, at some tavern or coffee-house, whose host 
supplied the solid fare. Toasts and speeches were an 
incident of banquets more formal. Dr. Johnson's 
famous Literary Club was founded as late as 1764, 
though there were other London clubs for wit and 
gastronomy of earlier date; and what a gathering of 
immortals must that have been, with Goldsmith, Gar- 
rick, Burke, Gibbon, Sir Joshua Reynolds and the sage 
dogmatizer himself at the head of the table! Here, 
as often in such masculine associations, domestic lone- 
liness was an inspiration, and widowers or bachelors 
predominated. Less characteristic in that respect, but 
better suited to the atmosphere of contemporary 
America, was that cis-Atlantic Club of Philadelphia, 
known as the "Junto," and founded by that other 
humbly born philosopher, Franklin, as far back as 
1726; it was made up of simple mechanics, who gath- 
ered their books together in a room of their own and 
fostered a civic spirit. 



Various other social clubs, less conspicuous histori- 
cally, were formed in our provinces in those late colonial 



LIBRARIES AND CLUBS 261 

days; the word "club," however, being then applied in 
a somewhat promiscuous sense. For out-of-door 
sports, men of congenial tastes and habits, who were 
blessed with means and good social standing, used to 
get together on occasion to enjoy some favorite pastime 
appropriate to the locality. From 1732, Philadelphia 
had a Schuylkill fishing society, whose members angled 
together in the warm months for perch and rock, and 
at their club-house held meetings, chose officers and 
spread a sumptuous table. To the southward, the 
landed gentry met socially together for fishing, shoot- 
ing or fox hunting, organized after a fashion to main- 
tain the expense of their favorite sport. Among these 
men of leisure in days before the Revolution we see 
Washington of Mount Vernon, with his Potomac 
friends and neighbors, fishing for the river sturgeon 
or gunning, or leaping fences on horseback, booted and 
spurred, like a squire of the old country, in pursuit of 
the fox or squirrel. On one occasion, as he relates, 
his party ran down a fox with a bob tail and cut ears, 
after a seven hours' chase, in the course of which most 
of their dogs were wounded. When, in 1773, the pre- 
destined "Father of his Country" (a term used, by the 
way, in our press before it was ever applied to him) 
took a journey to New York to place his young ward. 
Jack Custis, in college, he dined at the "Jockey Club" 
in Philadelphia, and then at some other club (as he 
styled it) in New York; passing, furthermore, a short 
evening at the "Old Club" at Hillis's in the latter city. 
He makes further record of a club which he once 
attended at Philadelphia while serving in the Conti- 
nental Congress. These facts we gather from the brief 
diaries which he used to keep in the leaves of his annual 
almanac.^ ^II Washington's Writings, 230. 



262 AMERICANS OF 1776 

But the word "club," as Washington thus frequently 
applied it, here and in the course of his political service 
at Williamsburg or Richmond, and while a delegate in 
the House of Burgesses, had rather an indefinite sense. 
To him and to others ranking as American gentlemen 
it often signified the mere gathering together of friends 
for some occasional spread. Moreover, the term was 
much applied to the mess of one's own set in the legis- 
lature at some private boarding house. Club messes, in 
fact, of this latter description became quite common 
in the early Congressional life at Washington City, 
which began with the nineteenth century, and members 
of the Senate or House living at the capital without 
their wives or families would monopolize some land- 
lady's table for their own exclusive set, admitting no 
fellow-diner to the mess except by common consent. 

At our more populous centres small congenial sets 
gathered for winter entertainments at one or another's 
house in turn or partook of the special hospitality of 
some host, their accepted leader. Thus originated the 
"Wistar parties" of Philadelphia renown during the 
Revolution; and similar gatherings, for cards or con- 
versation, were held in other towns and common- 
wealths. Even rural neighbors might modestly meet 
for some stated purpose once or twice a month to re- 
lieve the humdrum of home life. Informal happenings 
of a social character lead often to plans for a continu- 
ance and interchange, and something of a permanent 
establishment. 

Nor were societies of more ambitious scope wanting 
in America thus early, to promote learning and the 
liberal arts and to bring the cultured and those aspiring 
to culture into sympathetic relation. We read in 1773 
of a Virginia society for the advancement of useful 



LIBRARIES AND CLUBS 263 

knowledge, whose headquarters were at Williamsburg. 
More notable, as well as more permanent of duration, 
was the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, or 
Academy of Sciences, the earliest institution of the kind 
still extant in America. Chastellux speaks of its meet- 
ings, held once a fortnight, one of which he attended 
in the course of his travels ; and he comments upon its 
scrupulous gravity, after the manner of the French 
Academy, in the election of new members, passing upon 
foreigners of distinction as well as residents, for its roll 
of honor. Founded in 1769 by the union of some 
earlier literary societies, Franklin and Rittenhouse 
graced in succession its list of presiding officers. Some 
fifteen dignified men in powdered wigs and embroidered 
small-clothes met in solemn conclave and listened 
gravely to the reading of some scientific paper by one 
of their number upon electrical experiments or the use 
of the orrery. Jefferson was a benefactor of this 
society; and about 1780, while yet our Union was a 
Confederation, the plan was broached among its mem- 
bers of co-operating with similar learned bodies to be 
formed in other States. New York, too, had a Society 
for Promoting Useful Knowledge while still a British 
province. This, in 1768, was seen commending 
through the press a new automatic machine for pump- 
ing vessels at sea ; and the Philadelphia society pur- 
sued a like plan of public announcement from time to 
time of ingenious native inventions. 



America, furthermore, maintained in colonial times 
fraternities of a more popular and gregarious kind, 
whose aims were good-fellowship and benevolence, 
with a touch of ambition in political direction besides. 



264 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Tammany flourished at that period in our middle col- 
onies as an Indian sachem, the patron saint of America ; 
and Tammany meetings were held, with a Tammany 
dinner and public ball, at prominent provincial centres, 
such as Philadelphia, New York and Williamsburg. 
British immigrants, besides, gathered into societies, ac- 
cording to their English, Scotch or Irish antecedents, 
to practise philanthropy and the art of self-enjoyment; 
for, strong in their kindred ties, our foreign born would 
enroll as the Sons of St. George, or St. Andrew or 
St. Patrick. 

Freemasonry, with its sacred bond of brotherhood, 
established on this continent its provincial lodges about 
the middle of the eighteenth century, following Great 
Britain's espousal of that ancient institution. A world- 
wide affiliation, dating back ostensibly to the founding 
of Solomon's temple, commended this order, which 
originated in handicraft, to a constantly widening class 
of our common people, attracting them by an ancient 
and solemn ritual, the imposition of oaths of secrecy 
and the symbols of a mysterious public influence. 
Equal brotherhood was the spirit suffused by this 
ancient organization, at the same time that graded 
offices in its management with high-sounding titles in- 
cited the individual ambition for conspicuous posts of 
honor. Freemasonry in those days aroused strong 
opposition outside ; yet despite the printed sermons and 
tracts of our clergy, which denounced the institution 
as a device of Satan, citing Scriptural texts or claim- 
ing to expose its base practices, the order spread steadily 
through these thirteen colonies as over Continental 
Europe itself. There was a right worshipful grand 
master for North America, symbolical of our tendencies 
to union ; and lodges were instituted in leading colonies 



LIBRARIES AND CLUBS 265 

shortly before the drum beat to arms and indepen- 
dence 

Notwithstanding some famous Revolutionists, such 
as Washington and Joseph Warren, enrolled themselves 
in America's Masonic fraternity, it is not likely that an 
order of such international scope should have lent itself 
clearly and decidedly to colonial schemes for severing 
Britain's empire. Secrecy under oath, with its grips 
and passwords, infects profoundly the average imagi- 
nation, and too much individual advantage may be 
hoped for. I can myself recall how, at the time of 
our Civil War, local lodges in my native State did their 
proselyting work extensively among uniformed officers 
about to leave for the front, urging that in a grand 
fraternity of this kind brethren of one section of the 
Union who might fall by capture into the hands of 
brethren in another section would surely find herein a 
peculiar guaranty of life, comfort and personal safety. 
Such assurances proved, however, of little real avail 
where passions had divided men deeply; and so, too, 
Freemasonry in the eighteenth century counted prob- 
ably for little in that earlier emergency of bloodshed. 
Yet some of our lodges took on the patriot hue as the 
range of local sentiment favored. The Boston lodge 
changed, in 1775, its gathering-place from the house 
of a Tory landlord to that of another esteemed "a friend 
to his country."^ In 1777 the Freemasons of Phila- 
delphia met to celebrate St. John's day. Thirteen mem- 
bers happened to be present; so for thirteen regular 
toasts they ordered thirteen bottles of wine and thirteen 
bowls of toddy ; their reckoning was £13, and they spent 
thirteen hours in social companionship — all this in 
especial honor of the thirteen United States of 
America.'' *M. G., 1775- 

'I. C, 1777. 



266 AMERICANS OF 1776 

The real political workers of our land, who con- 
spired in secret to resist British policy and promote the 
cause of independence, affiliated as "Sons of Liberty." 
Beginning with the Stamp-Act resistance, the men of 
this famous order aroused opposition in their respective 
provinces to the British troops sent over by the King. 
They organized chiefly in 1765 and 1766 to nullify, 
first of all, the Stamp Act and cause its discontinu- 
ance; maintenance of order and the protection of 
American liberty being their declared objects. Their 
emblem was the liberty tree or liberty pole, which latter 
they would plant in token of a definite defiance; while 
Loyalists and the red-coats as eagerly destroyed or re- 
moved it. A riot arose in New York during the year 
1769 over a flagstaff set "in the fields,"^ which the royal 
troops cut down. Forbidden by the authorities to erect 
another pole upon public ground, the Sons next bought 
a private lot of land and there planted a high mast, 
which bore aloft a gilt vane inscribed "liberty," first 
drawing the pole through the streets in procession and 
then dedicating it formally to freedom. And so by 
their attitude toward such mute symbols of a rebellious 
spirit were Tories and Whigs in these Northern col- 
onies largely distinguished. 

'Since City Hall Park. 



XVIII 

INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 

THE origin of industrial pursuits among man- 
kind is shrouded in a mystery as great as the 
origin of the human race itself. The labor 
of subduing this earth and utilizing its products for the 
needs, the comforts, the luxuries of life, begins and 
continues with the development of the typical man 
whom God made, at length, in his own image and 
placed in dominion over the brute creation. Rudeness 
everywhere precedes the refinement of civilized life. To 
quote the late Phillips Brooks, the great Book which 
reveals the birth and final destiny of man begins with 
a garden and ends with the celestial city. 

But in the settlement of America, so modern and so 
fully chronicled, we trace out fairly well the progress 
of human industries upon a virgin soil which has to be 
reclaimed from primeval wildness and solitude by a 
new race of settlers. America began with agriculture 
as the chief and basic pursuit of its population in each 
of our thirteen provinces; Revolution was fought out 
by a union of "embattled farmers." Farming and 
stock-raising flourished by the latter third of the 
eighteenth century in all colonial America, and the 
native forests supplied whatever was most needed for 
fuel and industrial pursuits. Such simple products of 
the soil as lumber, potash and pearl-ash, tar and pitch 
were exported hence to Europe. More important still 



268 AMERICANS OF 1776 

for commerce, and more essential to the Old World, 
were the cereal products of our soil. 

"Agriculture," wrote Burke in 1775, "they [the 
Americans] have prosecuted with such a spirit that, 
besides feeding plentifully their own growing multi- 
tude, their annual export of grain, comprehending rice, 
has some years exceeded a million pounds in value." 
"At the beginning of the century some of these colonies 
imported corn from the mother country. But for some 
time past the Old World has been fed from the New."^ 
Nor should the export of tobacco from Virginia or of 
rice and indigo from South Carolina be overlooked in 
such a connection. South Carolina's rice, then her chief 
staple, was reckoned the best at this time in all the 
world. Yet while the trial culture of cotton only began 
after the peace of 1783. our extreme Southern colonies 
so favorably inclined earlier, that South Carolina's first 
Provincial Congress in 1775 advised the people to raise 
that plant. 

Northern farmers differed already as landholders 
from the great plantation lords of the South ; and those 
differences have affected the social growth of the two 
sections ever since, notwithstanding the common exist- 
ence of slave institutions when America first rebelled. 
Throughout the North, and notably in New England, 
the farmer tilled an enclosure of moderate extent, aided 
in the rougher work by the sons of his numerous family, 
while wives and daughters attended to the dairy and 
other farm pursuits. None were drones in such a hive, 
and with poverty went at least a livelihood and an 
honest independence. In our eastern section, withal, 
improvement of the soil went on in a regular way, 
every new village touching on an old one and new 
'II Burke's Works, ii6. 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 269 

settlements growing in regular order and progression. 
In Pennsylvania any one could buy the land he wanted 
for improvement, binding himself to pay a small annual 
ground rent. Here, however, houses and farms were 
widely scattered on the borders, and the advantage of 
a compact and contiguous growth for mutual help in 
need was lost. In the middle colonies the hunter or 
pioneer would often clear his wilderness, make the rude 
beginnings of garden, meadow and field cultivation, 
erect a log hut and then sell out to some other settler 
the half-improved farm, emigrating to borders still 
more remote. 

By the Revolutionary age many of our freeholders 
let their farms to be worked on halves and confined 
their personal attention to other pursuits in life. Stock 
raising was diversified; yet many outside the closer 
population of the cities raised on their own ground, 
besides flowers, the family vegetables. Gardening, as 
a special vocation, is of quite modern date, for in those 
early times men, women and children lived and worked 
much for themselves in the open air. Orchards, too, 
were tended with care as a personal industry; and in 
New England hay and cider were important products. 
The maxims of the almanac were memorized by our 
hardy husbandmen. Thus, when summer opened, 

"He that by the plough would thrive, 
Himself must either drive or guide." 

Or again, 

"He that now neglects the hoe, 
Must in winter suck his paw." 

Southern planters, though living more idly, with 
servile toil at full command, took pride, like true sons of 



270 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Adam, in agriculture. Jefferson chose always to reckon 
himself among our farmers. Washington, one of the 
chief landholders of his times in all America, while 
ordering from London silks and satins for his wife 
and costly suits of velvet and broadcloth for himself, 
with shoes (to be patterned on a specified last), pro- 
cured also from abroad the needful materials for his 
servants' clothes; he had the latest farming manuals 
sent him, along with pictures and playing cards. Great 
interest was taken by Virginia in cultivating new prod- 
ucts, and her Burgesses in 1772 voted an annual bounty 
of £50 for five years to encourage experiments in rais- 
ing grapes for wine in the mountain highlands of that 
province. 

Little progress was made in colonial times respecting 
mining or metallurgy. Soft coal, offered for sale about 
the James River ; stone, quarried casually in a Northern 
province to build some solid edifice near by ; iron, rudely 
smelted in small quantities for the needs of an immedi- 
ate neighborhood — these complete the native record of 
the era in that respect.^ In emulation of Spain, the 
British Crown put a clause into our charters during the 
seventeenth century which reserved specifically one-fifth 
of all such gold and srlver as the unexplored soil might 
yield. Such talliage, however, amounted to little or 
nothing ; and still less did the fifth of all precious stones, 
of which the second Massachusetts charter also made 
mention. Coal was little searched for at a time when 
forests were close at hand and wood fuel abundant. 
But Appalachian America's real mineral wealth lay in 
the homelier yield of coal, iron and petroleum, whose 

*At an early date, in Virginia, Master Berkeley is supposed 
to have found a lead mine, whose secret perished with him. 
Cooke's "Virginia." 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 271 

best secrets were locked up all the while that royal 
supremacy lasted. 

In fishing and hunting, however, these colonies 
yielded abundance, nor was it in vain that charters of 
New England had enjoined it upon the inhabitants to 
pursue "the trade of fishing" and "the business of 
taking whales." Burke's splendid tribute of 1775 to 
America's fisheries, and particularly to the whale fish- 
ery of our eastern colonies, will not soon be forgotten.^ 
Cod fisheries off the Grand Banks, near Newfoundland, 
also engaged the hardy mariners of Massachusetts Bay. 
Whales in those days came sometimes near the coast 
and were captured easily; one forty feet long, discov- 
ered off Marshfield in 1769 and attacked by sharks, 
became the prize of a fishing schooner; others were 
seen occasionally near Philadelphia and off Cape May. 

The general commerce of these colonies was brisk, 
active and diversified, whether foreign or coastwise. 
For not to speak of other ports, we see, in 1765, vessels 
clearing or entering Boston from Connecticut, New 
York, Philadelphia, Virginia and the James River; 
from various West India islands; from Greenock, 
London and the ports of Continental Europe. But 
there was little native capital embarked in such busi- 
ness, and the policy of the mother country was to con- 
fine all her colonies as much as possible to agriculture 
and the simple kindred pursuits of hunting and fishing, 
while she kept both commerce and manufactures for her 
own profit in this distant market. 

Dwelling upon the monopoly feature of England's 

commercial policy toward her colonies — that policy 

which contrives a "home market," so called, out of a 

distant and subservient population — Burke further 

'II Burke's Works, 116-118 (i775). 



272 AMERICANS OF 1776 

observes that Americans, and particularly those of the 
Northern provinces, imported ten times as much from 
Great Britain as they sent back in return, and that a 
great part of their foreign balance was and had to be 
remitted to London. True was it, as others had ob- 
served, that American seas were, covered with ships and 
their rivers floating with commerce; "but it is with our 
ships," he explains, "that these seas are covered, and 
their rivers float with British commerce." Americans 
were not rich, as a whole, nor were there really rich 
men among them ; for in some of their most consider- 
able provinces, such as Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
not two men could be found who could afford, as 
absentees, to spend a thousand pounds a year. "The 
American merchants are our factors," says Burke ; "all 
in reality, most even in name. The Americans trade, 
navigate, cultivate with British capital — to their own 
advantage, to be sure, for without these capitals their 
ploughs would be stopped and their ships wind bound. 
But he who furnishes the capital must, on the whole, 
be principally benefited ; the person who works upon it 
profits on his part, too, but he profits in a subordinate 
way, as our colonies do," or, in other words, as the 
servant of a wise and indulgent master.^ 



In trade, to speak broadly, social distinctions are 
fostered by the demarcation of wholesale and retail, 
"Raw wool," writes Douglas Jerrold, "does not speak 
to half-penny ball of worsted ; tallow in the cask looks 
down upon sixes to the pound, and pig iron turns up 
its nose at ten-penny nails." Yet wholesale and retail 
in a community are always relative terms, and in the 
*I Burke's Works, 375, 392-394. 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 273 

days of our forefathers, whose capital was so meagre, 
even the largest dealers among the inhabitants did what 
nowadays would be thought rather a petty business. 
Importing merchants advertised consignments from 
abroad or coastwise of all the miscellaneous articles 
of wear, food or drink products that might suit the 
various classes of consumers in a new society. There 
were English, Scotch and Irish goods; broadcloths of 
scarlet, crimson, green, black, blue, chocolate, drab and 
mixed, from London, Liverpool or Glasgow; damask, 
brocade, lutestrings, satin, sarsnet and poplins; gold, 
silver and Brussels lace; fashionable silks, satin shoes, 
garnet or pearl necklaces and white or black beaver 
riding hats for the ladies; with muffets and tippets, 
besides, and a host of minor commodities "too tedious 
to mention," as the advertiser would close his enumera- 
tion. Besides sugar, Bohea tea, coffee, chocolate and 
spices, were announced imported raisins, currants, 
Turkey figs, olives, Cheshire and Gloucestershire 
cheeses, fresh and pickled limes, citron, sweet China 
oranges, Lisbon sweet oil, London porter and even 
orange juice for punch. 

We speak as a novelty of department stores to-day, 
such as are carried on at our chief centres for the gen- 
eral public as individual buyers. But one reads of such 
an establishment, called the "Universal Store," which 
did business in New York City a hundred and thirty 
years or more ago, at the sign of the looking-glass and 
druggist's post. So far, too, as local trade might per- 
mit, such was, in fact, the character of most of our 
country stores in that eighteenth century, whose cus- 
tom was drawn from a safe constituency, when travel 
to a metropolis was rare and mail and carriage facilities 
inadequate. The country trader in "dry and West 



274 AMERICANS OF 1776 

India goods," purveyor for the people and general 
factor In the exchange of farm supphes for miles about, 
was indeed a man of substance and held high his head ; 
in town or county affairs, and perchance in the parish 
church, too, his influence was great, for he knew every 
one; and at his store, as in a tavern, men drew up by 
the fire to discuss politics and the local news, stimulated 
by the glass of liquor which he disdained not to measure 
out for modest coin. 

The regular storekeepers of these provinces antag- 
onized the auctioneers, whose sales at vendue, as they 
were called, embraced not only second-hand goods, but 
such at first hand, besides, as might need to be quickly 
disposed of for ready money. The sales of sherififs and 
fiduciaries were at public auction. Men sharp and glib- 
tongued devoted themselves to this pursuit. We see 
one who opened his "auction hall" close by the town 
house, with a livery stable for his patrons conveniently 
opposite. Goods imported twelve months earlier were 
offered by him two days in the week. In large towns 
might be seen evening auctions, besides; there were 
horse auctions, book auctions and mock auctions; and 
prizes taken by our privateers during the Revolution 
were presently knocked off In this manner. Auction- 
eers, like other business men of our colonies, accosted 
the public in the third person when advertising. "Puff- 
ing is not his talent," announced one of these in the 
local press, content, as he declared, with a moderate 
commission ; "but he begs to say that, as he is deter- 
mined to exert himself and use his utmost endeavors 
to give satisfaction to his employers, so he humbly 
hopes that in point of fidelity, assiduity and dexterity 
they will find him to come out not far from the first 

three "^ 

^"^^^- 'N.E.C., (1775-76). 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 275 

Startling and spectacular modes of doing business, 
such as we witness at the present day, were not in 
vogue thus early. Men did not propose "large sales 
and small profits," but rather moderate sales with a 
moderate return. Sales at "immense sacrifice" were 
not proclaimed, as though the main effort of merchants 
were to escape from their ventures with the lowest 
possible margin of loss; but dealers meant to make 
ends meet, if no more, and said as much. There ap- 
peared no individual haste to get rich, no monopoly. 
One who was hard pressed offered to sell at lowest 
prices, which meant at somewhat more than cost. An 
enterprising dealer at one of our ports announced in 
1 77 1, as a novel plan, that he would hereafter sell by 
wholesale and retail, at "little more than the sterling cost 
and charges." He warranted, moreover, that the teas 
and indigo he sold were of the best kind, and if it 
proved otherwise, he would take back the goods and 
refund the money. In short, if our colonist offered to 
sell at actual loss, he would not say so ; but when closing 
out a business hastily, he offered simply to sell at much 
under the customary advance. 



The wide recognition of a credit system in these 
colonies bred difficulties which trade had constantly to 
cope with. Murray, a Scotch immigrant, found in 
1736, when importing his first cargo to a Southern 
port, that in the Carolinas a twelve months' credit was 
regularly expected; and a large part of what he re- 
ceived for his merchandise was in North Carolina cur- 
rency and in private debts floated by bills receivable, 
which he could not negotiate abroad. Not only did the 
plaintive duns of printer and carrier frequently appear 



276 AMERICANS OF 1776 

in the press of this era, such as I have elsewhere men- 
tioned, but those, besides, of business men, equally 
vague and equally deferential toward all delinquent 
patrons. The threat to sue was always a covert one, 
without mention of names, and usually, we may assume, 
that threat was not fulfilled. Several times (one of 
these forbearing creditors would say) he had given 
public notice to all debtors to settle with him, but little 
attention had been paid. So now for the last time he 
issued his notice, and those who disregard it "will be 
sued according to law, without respect to persons."^ 
"Intending very shortly for England" was a favor- 
ite plea as Revolution approached, and he who was 
thus winding up his American affairs "begged the 
favor of all persons indebted to make immediate pay- 
ment;" for delinquent debts long standing he would 
certainly leave in the hands of an attorney. Many an 
advertiser had debts of his own that must be paid, and 
hence he begged leave to press for the payments due 
himself. "Cash or short credit" was the mode favored 
in Philadelphia by 1772; or perhaps "cash or short 
credit or barter." One would sell his cheapest if paid 
for the goods in cash ; and he sought security where he 
sold on long credit. By 1773 some declared publicly 
that they had suffered great inconvenience of credit, and 
would sell hereafter for ready money only. 

Of course, in our primitive state of society the 
barter system had largely prevailed. Farmers ex- 
changed at the country store their meat, their grain, 
cheese and butter and their garden truck for house- 
hold groceries and clothing. The miller who ground 
corn took his toll from the meal. Due bills from a 
dealer were payable out of his stock in trade. Car- 
'M. G., 1773- 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 277 

penters and painters made good what they owed by 
jobbing their services. During the momentous 
seventies of the eighteenth century one rum distiller 
offered to sell cheap for cash or molasses ; another con- 
sented to take "good merchantable potash," and a third 
tobacco "and other articles that sell." It was not un- 
common thus early for men to play one trade into 
another, as where a cutler who sold knives and razors 
took in exchange the skins of otters, foxes and wild 
cats. Paper makers gave out new paper for old rags. 
Coppersmiths or pewterers would offer the highest price 
for old copper, brass, pewter or lead. A brushmaker 
took hogs' bristles for his wares. A general grocer, 
disposing of his stock of goods, first offered to give long 
credit on security ; and this failing to stimulate custom, 
he proposed further to take "rum, sugar, molasses, 
coffee, chocolate or cotton wool" in payment. 

Tobacco was long used in Virginia with great satis- 
faction as a medium of exchange, and it served the 
people well in the War for Independence. Provincial 
bills of credit, however, were a constant source of con- 
fusion, mingled with the Continental loans and cur- 
rency; and the paper emissions of our thirteen States 
during the exhaustive strife with the mother country 
brought such disastrous results that the framers of our 
Federal Constitution prohibited absolutely the issue of 
State bills of credit. Provincial paper money, poorly 
printed, had circulated locally in these colonies in place 
of coin long before the Revolution.^ Great perplexity 
arose in changing permanently our money denomina- 

*Among things stolen from him, a Philadelphia advertiser an- 
nounced, in 1769, 2 six-dollar bills in Maryland money, 3 fifteen- 
shilling bills, and 3 ten-shilling bills; also a five-shilling bill, 
Newcastle money, with a person's name written on its back. 
P.C. 



278 AMERICANS OF 1776 

tion from pounds, shillings, pence to dollars and cents. 
Many used the latter mode of counting while yet they 
were British subjects; but the custom varied in different 
provinces, and it was long before our people, as a whole, 
could get out of the old way of reckoning.^ 



With shops, as with dwelling houses, in colonial 
times, there was no precise numbering or lettering, 
even in the cities, but one's situation on a street was 
identified by other means of description. One adver- 
tised his place of business as "close by the town house," 
"nearly opposite" Judge C.'s dwelling or some desig- 
nated meeting-house, "next to" D.'s bake-house, "cor- 
ner of Winter Street and opposite the lane," "Straw- 
berry Alley, third house from Market Street, and nearly 
opposite Mr. Luke's tavern," and the like. Shop signs 
were not common which gave the retailer's personal 
name, but emblems, rather, were used, as at an inn. 
One's pursuit was carried on at "the lion and glove," 
"the lock and key," "the heart and glove," "the blue 
ball" or "the gold ball," "the bell in hand," "the ship 
aground," "the sun," "the whale-bone," "the tobacco 
pipe," "the brazen head," "the lamb," "the golden 
cock," "the fan," "the naked boy," or "the three doves." 
Of such devices posterity has long been reminded by 
the tobacconist's "Highlander" or "Indian" and "the 
golden mortar and pestle" of the apothecary. The 

^About 1765, the money used in New York consisted of silver, 
gold, British half pence (often called "coppers"), and bills of 
credit. Against the violence of a mob, which lasted several 
days, the leading business men of that city enforced a mutual 
agreement to require 14 coppers to a shilling, in place of the 
12^/2 formerly current, so as to conform to the value of a shil- 
ling in neighboring colonies. 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 279 

business designation itself was more specific and techni- 
cal, in many cases, than we find it nowadays, for one 
described himself as a glover, a fuller, a dyer, a mercer, 
a draper, a haberdasher, a pewterer, to say nothing of 
other names in the vernacular which have held place 
better. The style of the pursuit clung closely to the 
individual, who, less cringing and obsequious in his 
pursuit, perhaps, than after the London fashion, gave, 
nevertheless, the impression of knowing his place, and 
not intending to get above his business lest his business 
should get above him. All this, however, was subject 
to disturbance by the new ideas of equal opportunity 
and rise in life which came in with the Declaration, 
stirring the old fixity of American conditions into a 
more emulous composite. Most shopping was done by 
day, and only grocers and druggists kept open in the 
evening. 

One of the most striking characteristics of those 
times was the domestic association which trade pre- 
sented, whether for town or country. In Philadelphia, 
as in our other chief centres of business, men kept shop 
in their own dwellings — a custom which still holds 
largely true of London and Paris. Such dwellings were 
usually two stories in height and only moderately 
spacious ; the shop seldom occupied the whole depth of 
the first story, but was chiefly confined to the usual 
front rooms; while in the rear and overhead lived the 
tradesman with his family. Hence was it that wife 
or children waited much upon customers, and the 
widow not seldom continued the trade of her late hus- 
band. For if woman had not yet launched into that 
wider range of professional and clerical pursuits with 
which the present age is familiar, she took at least a 
considerable range of experience in those smaller in- 



28o AMERICANS OF 1776 

dustries which kept her at home. In shop-keeping the 
sex showed much business capacity, made a comfort- 
able Hving for the family, and in their own sphere were 
respected. Other uses were made of the domestic prem- 
ises as occasion might suggest; and in the pinch of 
hard times we see tradespeople, wholesale and retail, 
advertising for boarders or lodgers or to let their 
stables. 

The same domestic and business combination, let us 
note, applied in most other pursuits of life at that 
period. Such, to this day, is a common mode of living 
with clergymen, physicians, dentists, literary writers 
and those who take private pupils for Instruction. 
Hotels and inns are thus carried on. The farmer's life 
makes home and family its base of operations. Cob- 
blers, tailors, dressmakers, milliners, small tradesmen 
and a host of those engaged in sedentary pursuits of 
the humbler kind live and carry on their work sur- 
rounded by wife and children, and enclosed within the 
wholesome environ of home. And so was it, far more 
positively and universally, in America during the simple 
colonial and Revolutionary age. They, even, whose 
pursuits were manufactvtring or mechanical, requiring 
special workshops, built close to the homestead on their 
own private acres, and the sound of the saw-mill and 
grist-mill was heard through the kitchen windows. 
Even distilleries were thus carried on ; the large country 
store, if not in one's own dwelling, was at all events 
contiguous to it ; and many a lawyer and country squire 
to whom his fellow-townsmen came for consultation 
had a detached building, which he called his office, on 
the same lot with his residence, though closer to the 
roadside. Farmers, when landholders besides, are pro- 
verbially a sturdy race, lovers of freedom and virtuous ; 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 281 

and a people whose individual homes and business grow 
up together are the last of mankind to be enslaved or 
subjugated by a foreign oppressor. 

Of the learned professions in those days, divinity 
took precedence; and the college-bred men who ex- 
pounded the tenets of the provincial Christian faith and 
set a godly example to their parishioners had an abiding 
influence. But medicine and the law, despite some prac- 
tical drawbacks, found their votaries here among the 
rising generation. Medical schools in Philadelphia and 
New York opened the way for our native-born to prac- 
tise, while other young men of talent and ambition in 
the chief provinces sought distinction at the bar. "In 
no country, perhaps, in the world," wrote Burke in 
1775, "is the law so generally a study. The pro- 
fession itself is numerous and powerful, and in most 
provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the 
deputies sent to Congress were lawyers," And so, 
we may add, did the later exigencies of Revolution keep 
our patriot lawyers at the front. For the study of the 
law, as Burke has observed, "renders men acute, in- 
quisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, 
full of resources," and with their innate love of free- 
dom, men of this intelligent profession prove powerful 
when assailed.^ 

Architects, surveyors, bankers, brokers pursued their 
several callings in those times after the prevalent 
fashion. Our bankers and brokers dealt chiefly in loans 
at interest upon mortgage, bottomry or pledge, and dis- 
counted the bills, bonds and notes of private individuals. 
The term "intelligence oflice" was used in those days to 

*II Burke's Works, 125. 



282 AMERICANS OF 1776 

denote a general brokerage in goods, wares and mer- 
chandise, such as merged readily into pawnbroking, 
with its secrecy and despatch. But by 1773 we see set 
up at Boston a general register office "to meet a great 
inconvenience of masters and mistresses/' and out of 
this grew, probably, the "intelligence office" as we 
understand that term at the present day. Scriveners, 
conveyancers and scouts were found on the outskirts 
of the legal profession; and we read of a notary in 
Philadelphia who offered to translate or draft any 
French or Spanish writing, and eked out his income 
by carrying on a reading and writing school. 



Besides the home or domestic attribute of which most 
callings in that early era partook, we should recall the 
personal and individual character of trade and the pro- 
fessions alike. Joint-stock companies or corporations 
had hardly yet a footing in England or America, and 
chartered monopolies, even for banking, were almost 
unknown, save in a rare connection with public opera- 
tions like the Bank of England. Whether a business 
was conducted in the name of factor or principal in 
those days, the capital was commonly furnished and 
risked by some individual, and individual liability as 
well as individual enterprise embarked in it. Men pur- 
sued their plans of life with a moderate capital. What- 
ever one placed in trade or finance, he managed or 
supervised himself. The added capital furnished by 
an outsider was simply borrowed money, for the most 
part, with or without security, and one was bound to 
repay it like his other obligations. He might associate 
with him a partner ; but partnership and single pursuit 
risked alike all that one had in the world, and both 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 283 

self-interest and the dread of imprisonment for debt 
or of bankruptcy kept one sedulous to protect his credit. 
Successful, on the one hand, or failing disastrously, 
on the other, our merchant was swayed to the side of 
moderation; he sought a moderate business, a modest 
competence, moderate profits. There might be com- 
petition, but no one in the community was strong 
enough to drive out all rivals and engross the oppor- 
tunities for himself. Partnerships, too, consisted largely 
of family relations, and the father meant to hand down 
his business to his son, as in the European days of fixed 
conditions in life. 

In manufactures, at this age, American progress was 
that of an active and ingenious though undeveloped 
population. Needful construction from the trees and 
soil products about them was the settlers' first concern. 
Nothing shows better the stage reached in comforts 
and luxuries at any time than the style of a people's 
habitations. Saw-mills came early into vogue. From 
rude huts and dwellings our colonists gradually ad- 
vanced to buildings, public and private, of fair archi- 
tectural pattern; though for doors, window sashes and 
the finer products of the joiner they relied mostly upon 
master workmen in the mother country, who dressed 
imported lumber and sent it back fashioned for its uses. 
Shipbuilding was another early occupation of our col- 
onists, fostered by the universal zeal for fishing and 
cruising; and this may be pronounced the first great 
manual industry established on this coast, being recog- 
nized, in fact, as highly important, a whole century 
before we declared our independence. So, too, in 
carriages and furniture of the common and simple pat- 
tern colonial America made rapid progress. Our use 



284 AMERICANS OF 1776 

of metals was primitive. Native iron was worked up 
into kitchen utensils and the simpler implements of 
farming. The art of native pottery was turned to good 
account. But the better sort of table outfit, good axes 
and steel hardware were mostly imported. In short, 
American industry catered to the common wants of 
our common people, and essayed little to attract the 
custom of the high bred and fastidious. 

But in textiles, more particularly, our colonies were 
kept dependent on the mother country by the artful 
policy which British manufacturers had impressed 
upon the King and Parliament for their own constant 
advantage. For all fabric-weaving machines, as well 
as for fabricated goods, the rule of the mother country 
was to make and keep her colonies in this new world 
dependent upon her to the utmost. Our colonists 
brought over with them early the spinning-wheel and 
hand loom ; and the weaving of homespun clothing was 
one of those farm occupations which, like knitting and 
sewing, engaged the female members of a family and 
wedded each small manufacture so long to the house- 
hold. For the primitive home market of a people is 
the individual home. We had also the fulling-mill for 
felting and compacting woven fabrics. 

Down almost to the very date of American inde- 
pendence the machinery for clothing our inhabitants 
was nearly as simple as that of the feudal ages. Rude 
water-power turned our saw-mills or ground the miller's 
corn; rude hand-power or horse-power accomplished 
most other work of the mechanical kind. Not until 
about 1775, or the battle of Lexington, was the Watt 
steam engine first set in successful operation in Great 
Britain ; so that steam motive power — that giant force 
which has changed completely the material operations 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 285 

of modern society — post-dates, in reality, our colonial 
era. Moreover, as we should recall, it was the decade 
1760-70 which first brought out in Great Britain the 
new inventions in textile weaving; and so jealous were 
English manufacturers of those years over their novel 
experiments that all export of the new machines to 
America was strictly forbidden, nor was even the 
migration of workmen who knew how to construct and 
operate them permitted. In various other ways trade 
in these colonies had been hampered from time to time 
by stringent acts of Parliament, with the like intent of 
enriching home merchants and manufacturers at our 
expense. Hence it may be fitly said that America's 
Revolution was a parallel revolution, both political and 
industrial, in point of time. 

As an instance of colonial enterprise in that century, 
a coarse but comfortable hat had come into fashion, 
of native make, for which a market was opened in the 
British West Indies. But Parliament stopped that 
trade short by a prohibition; and the Crown in 1767 
issued strict orders to watch all vessels arriving from 
New England, New York or Philadelphia in the West 
Indian ports, and to detect all attempts at selling Ameri- 
can hats and enforce the penalties of the law. In the 
earlier days of peaceful submission America's profit had 
been not so much in any fostering care exercised by the 
mother country as by what Burke styled "a wise and 
salutary neglect," which had allowed intelligent in- 
dustry in these colonies to take its own way toward 
perfection. 

The non-importation leagues formed here in 1767 
were a fitting response to the new policy now entered 
upon by the King and Parliament. Such retaliating 



286 AMERICANS OF 1776 

combination was not alone for increasing our corre- 
sponding trade and manufactures, but largely for 
alleviating by self-denial the inevitable distress of our 
people. The New England and middle colonies, which 
chiefly practised the new policy, were greatly in debt, 
and economy was needful. They had no great staples 
to export, like Virginia and South Carolina, for main- 
taining their resources and soothing the oppressor. A 
resolve passed by the Massachusetts General Court 
early in 1768^ carefully avoided all expression offensive 
to royal authority, and urged as leading considerations 
for a non-importation policy the great decay of trade in 
that province, the scarcity of money, the heavy debt 
contracted in the French and Indian War, which was 
still unpaid, and the great difficulties to which our 
people were reduced. Yet the production of home 
manufactures was kept likewise in view. 

Our Northern colonies, indeed, suffered great de- 
pression at the date of Parliament's fatal experiment 
of taxation; and it is only just to add that England 
herself was similarly impoverished, not only because 
of that same war, which had involved the struggle of 
France and Great Britain for supremacy in the New 
World, but through temporary embarrassments, be- 
sides, of her East India venture, which threatened home 
bankruptcy and failure. Once aroused, our native zeal 
and energy turned sedulous attention to the develop- 
ment here of a home market. The breed of native 
sheep was encouraged, and the people passed local re- 
solves not to buy lambs nor to kill early, so that native 
wool might be grown and the poor employed. A New 
York society "for promoting arts" voted premiums to 
such as should spin the most linen yarn in course of 
'See I M. G., 1767, 1768. 



INDUSTRIAL PURSUITS 287 

a year, knit the greatest number of stockings, keep 
the neatest beehives or make the best cheeses. Patriots 
of the middle colonies voted not to buy foreign beer, but 
to patronize the breweries of Philadelphia and Balti- 
more. Among ingenious experiments of those times 
was one of preparing flax so as to resemble cotton in 
whiteness, softness and coherency; and another of 
making cloth out of hop stalks. Pennsylvania stimu- 
lated by bounties the cultivation of mulberry trees for 
rearing the silkworm; and for Pennsylvania's emula- 
tion, Franklin held up China to notice as a country 
whose prolific people went about cheaply and durably 
clad in silk clothing. 

It must be conceded that our colonial Whigs, in their 
earnestness to make effective their own plans of resist- 
ance to the mother country, suffered not fools gladly, 
nor endured with patience the indifference or non- 
compliance of Tory fellow-citizens. Sons of Liberty 
published the names of those who chose to import in 
violation of the public agreement, and denounced the 
social excommunication of such offenders, or, as we 
would say in our own day, declared a boycott against 
them. Methods of compulsion practised by one hostile 
class of the community against another vary not radi- 
cally from age to age. But the non-importation prin- 
ciple had broad justifying grounds aside from all pres- 
ent intent of retaliation. And in all ages of tyranny 
and coercion on the part of a parent government, the 
refusal of the oppressed to buy or consume the wares 
and products of those at whose greedy instigation the 
dangerous policy of commercial monopoly has been 
entered upon is the simplest, safest and one of the surest 
means of effective resistance. 



XIX 

PROVINCIAL POLITICS 

LET us now inquire what free political parties, 
if any, existed in America in the latest colonial 
years, popular in their scope and open in their 
appeals for public support. Party divisions originate 
in human nature and grow with the free expression of 
self-government ; party spirit flames brightest and hot- 
test in a commonwealth or community where open 
patriotic concert may achieve an efficient direction in 
affairs. During the earlier period of our colonization, 
and while the mother country either neglected her 
offspring or was distracted by her own civil tumult over 
the Stuarts and Cromwell, American politics developed 
daringly, and the body of settlers in each colony gained 
from the set to whom chartered privileges had first been 
granted various popular concessions in the direction of 
equal political rights. In Massachusetts, without any 
express royal license, the people chose their own rulers. 
It was after the compact of Crown and Parliament 
which settled the line of William and Mary that our 
politics sank into a placid and subsidiary condition, 
under an astute management from abroad, which kept 
the colonies locally disunited for over seventy years, 
and until the Stamp Act experiment aroused strong 
opposition. 

Roundheads and Cavaliers had, meanwhile, given 
place on British soil to the national party division of 



PROVINCIAL POLITICS 289 

"Whigs" and "Tories." The latter distinguishing 
terms were long in vogue there; and so, too, following 
the parental fashion, were they in these cis-Atlantic 
provinces. "In every colony," writes John Adams in 
1 81 2, "divisions always prevailed. In New York, 
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts and all the rest 
a court and country party have always contended. 
Whig and Tory disputed very sharply before the Revo- 
lution, and in every step during the Revolution."^ This 
positive statement is corroborated by other testimony 
of our Revolutionary fathers. Yet narrow and crooked 
enough were the channels through which coursed native 
politics while our provincial interests were kept apart, 
and the grand ideas of an independent Confederation, 
of a union irreconcilable with British sovereignty, re- 
mained in embryo. 



We at this day, who vote freely and frequently to- 
gether without requirement of rank or property for 
exercising the right, and who elect our chief magis- 
trate, our chief executive subordinates and even our 
judges, as well as representatives in both branches of 
the legislature, and the local county, town or city 
functionaries, should recall that the elective franchise 
in those early times was far more restricted in its exer- 
cise. For, first of all, with negro slavery nominally 
existing to 1776 or later in all the colonies, and white 
bondage, besides, to a considerable extent,^ the voter, 
a male inhabitant twenty-one 3^ears or more in age, 
must have been a freeman or "free white man," at the 
least. More than this, only "freeholders," or those 

'X John Adams's Works, 23. 
^See Chapter II. 



290 AMERICANS OF 1776 

owning real estate, possessed the suffrage at all in vari- 
ous Middle and Southern colonies, while Massachusetts 
and Maryland each fixed a property qualification in 
lands or personalty as indispensable. Only Pennsyl- 
vania, Rhode Island and Connecticut — colonies treated 
by British kings with marked favor in their respective 
charters — bestowed the suffrage liberally in those times 
upon freemen, or at least free taxpayers. In these and 
some minor respects colonial laws varied. 

Nor as to the rulers to be voted for was the method 
at that day a liberal one. In most of these colonies, 
as in Great Britain, the range of a voter's choice was 
confined to officials of his own town or county, and to 
sending, moreover, from among neighbors and fellow- 
citizens such as might represent his little community 
annually in the legislature. This meant scarcely more, 
In practical effect, than local self-government, pure and 
simple. Municipalities governed by mayor, aldermen 
and councllmen scarce existed, but selectmen and the 
petty local officers down to hog-reeve comprised the 
usual list. This was about all. In only two colonies 
out of all the thirteen, Rhode Island and Connecticut, 
had chartered voters the right to choose all colonial 
officials, the governor and council included. Massa- 
chusetts had once exercised such popular functions by 
forcing the phraseology of her original charter; but 
that from William and Mary which replaced it gave 
only a modified right of choosing the governor's coun- 
cil, through a selection by the legislature itself, then 
styled the General Court. In Pennsylvania and Mary- 
land, under proprietary grants, were hereditary rulers 
of the Penn or Calvert families, who, as overlords and 
absentees, drew an income from the inhabitants and 
appointed each his resident lieutenant-governor with 



PROVINCIAL POLITICS 291 

the royal sanction. In all but four, then, of these 
thirteen colonies the royal government was really pro- 
vincial, and the governor himself, the King's vice- 
gerent, was appointed and recalled at pleasure by the 
Crown. Nor did the colonial legislatures (except for 
Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts) repre- 
sent the subject people, except in a single branch, such 
as Virginia's House of Burgesses. For the council, 
so called, that germ of our modern State Senate — with 
functions, then secretly exercised, which blended execu- 
tive and legislative authority — was a royal or propri- 
etary adjunct of British rule like the governor himself. 
Members of this council or upper house were generally 
selected, under royal sanction, from among influential 
persons of the colony, legal, financial and military, and 
were held bound by fees and salaries to regard the local 
interests of the Crown; their approval, with that, be- 
sides, of the provincial governor, was indispensable to 
give measures of the popular house the force of laws. 
Nor this alone, for the King usually reserved a final 
veto upon all the legislation of each colony. Judges 
held their commissions by executive appointment, or 
in some instances were chosen by the legislature; but 
never in those times were they elected by the people. 

Even for the legislature itself representation was not 
popular, in our modern sense of the word, but the town 
or county unit supplied, as such, its whole delegation. 
By this means was fostered local pride rather than the 
numerical rule by a census. Less than a century later 
the colonial charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut, 
so much vaunted for their democracy in this earlier age 
that they were long kept intact in place of independent 
State constitutions, were denounced and struggled 
against almost to the point of rebellion, not only be- 



292 AMERICANS OF 1776 

cause the voter's franchise became antiquated in its 
limitation, but by reason of the travesty upon popular 
consent which ensued by the time that great growing 
cities and dwindHng rustic hamlets became classed 
numerically in the same rigid category for representa- 
tive vote and influence. Equality of political rights is 
the ideal of every advancing commonwealth in a coun- 
try like ours ; but as years roll on the liberality of the 
past becomes the irksome exclusiveness of the present, 
and all true republics tend to the rule of numbers. 

And so, once more, in contemporary modes of 
suffrage, the age I am describing favored strong 
families and the ascendancy of an upper class in society 
to an extent which in our own day American States 
would not tolerate. Bribery and coercion were the 
open accompaniments of election in the British Isle, 
especially when members of Parliament were to be 
chosen, and though little prevalent on this side of the 
ocean, such abuses were closely incident to the polling 
methods then prevalent. In our own day, great stakes 
at issue in patronage and great corporate wealth and 
social complexity foster corruption ; yet the better regu- 
lation of the suffrage supplies a corrective. The ancient 
hustings, the show of hands, the open declaration of a 
voter's preferences, amid pugilistic confusion, coarse 
ribaldry and the rowdyish marshalling of party ad- 
herents we seldom witness at an election nowadays; 
but ballots, officially printed and furnished, voting lists 
and the well-guarded ballot-box protect in our day the 
voter's secret and personal choice. 



The old English method of oral or viva voce vote 
prevailed in America during colonial times, and New 



PROVINCIAL POLITICS 293 

England's town-meeting discussion or the open-air 
stump speaking and joint debate in Virginia favored 
such courageous assertion of one's civic preference. 
But voting by the ballot had come gradually into vogue 
in America, first for religious congregations and next 
for secular gatherings ; so that our commonwealths by 
1776 were found discordant in preferences on this 
point when forming their several State governments. 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsyl- 
vania and Georgia pronounced at once for the ballot, 
while most of the remaining colonies showed their ad- 
herence still to the ancient oral method of their fore- 
fathers. So strenuous, indeed, did Virginia continue, with 
the child of her loins, Kentucky, for the old method of 
standing up like men to be counted, that as late as 1850 
those two commonwealths announced in newly drafted 
constitutions, dramatically and somewhat humorously, 
that in all elections, whether by the people or the legis- 
lature, "the votes shall be personally and publicly given 
viva voce, provided that dumb persons entitled to 
suffrage may vote by ballot." 

In provincial New York the oral mode of voting had 
prevailed from the earliest times; but by 1770 a strong 
popular current set toward substituting the ballot, and 
controversy became heated on this subject. Many 
voters complained that they were intimidated at the 
polls by employers and those of superior influence in the 
community, with whom it rested to favor or oppress; 
and hence they wished to vote secretly. "Many of the 
poorer people,'' they contended, "feel deeply the aristo- 
cratic power, or rather the intolerable tyranny, of the 
great and opulent, who openly threaten them with loss 
of employment and arrest for debt unless they give their 
votes as desired." But opponents argued that to dare 



294 AMERICANS OF 1776 

and choose to speak their minds freely was "their birth- 
right as EngHshmen and their glory as freemen." At 
a public meeting called that year in New York City to 
discuss this question, the ballot mode was voted down, 
and those present pronounced by a large majority their 
approbation of the old mode of viva voce — this, how- 
ever, we should observe, by taking their vote after the 
very method objected to. Resolutions of instruction 
to the provincial legislature followed, which declared: 
(i) That the ballot was a dangerous innovation, di- 
rectly contrary to the old laws and customs of the realm 
and unknown to any British government on this con- 
tinent. (2) That its use was an implicit surrender of 
one of the most invaluable privileges of Englishmen — 
that of declaring one's sentiments openly on all occa- 
sions, instead of by secret and clandestine expressions. 
( 3 ) That the argument of delivering the poor from the 
influential rich is delusive and fallacious, since no honest 
man will sell his birthright. (4) That the right of 
ballot opens doors to fraud, and that in Pennsylvania 
and Connecticut, where elections have constantly been 
by ballot, frauds are more and more complained of 
which scrutiny does not detect. (5) That ballot will 
destroy the right of the majority and introduce con- 
fusion ; for no one will offer himself as a candidate, nor 
can there ever be a determinate number of candidates 
where whim may guide the choice. (6) That it will 
encourage hypocrisy and deceit and prevent laudable 
zeal. (7) That thereby too much is intrusted to the 
scrutiny and count of some returning officer.^ But 
while those who stood for keeping the old colonial cus- 
tom unchanged prevailed on this occasion — "the 
mighty, the rich, the big-wigs and square toes," as it 

*M. G., January i8, 1770. 



PROVINCIAL POLITICS 295 

was said — controversy would not down ; and voting re- 
form made such progress with other Revolutionary 
ideas that the framers of New York's State constitution 
in 1777 concluded to try the written ballot, simply as 
a novel and experimental substitute, and subject to the 
final discretion of the legislature. "Among divers of 
the good people," observes that notable instrument, the 
opinion is prevalent that voting by ballot "would tend 
more to preserve the liberty and equal freedom of the 
people" than the oral mode.^ 



We are to conclude, then, that in our Revolutionary 
era American politics, so far as the common voter was 
concerned, took a narrow range, and consisted mostly 
in local home rule. In that particular the New England 
town meeting for town government afforded the most 
admirable epitome of a democracy which the world had 
ever witnessed; coequality among fellow-citizens here 
prevailing, so far as coequality could consist at all, 
and the idea of practical co-operation in local public 
affairs being strongly presented, while at the same time 
was supplied a school for politics where public dis- 
cussion, public oratory and public influence might mould 
political leadership in earnest. The county grouping of 
the Middle and Southern colonies gave far less political 
directness. Our development westward, over the sur- 
face of a continent, has since somewhat modified the 
original type in a civilization which commingles the 
blood of the primitive settlers and infuses foreign ele- 
ments besides; and nowadays we have to confront the 

*We may note that our early ballots were written, not printed, 
and that upon the penning of the voter's choice were based 
some lesser objections to the new method. 



296 AMERICANS OF 1776 

swarming of our composite population into great 
hives of industry, whence issue those monstrous 
municipaHties, hard to regulate, whose problems of 
self-rule are difficult and whose administrators slip 
too easily into the mire of misgovernment and 
corruption. But the New England town meeting 
serves still the choice American model for self-rule 
by the people, wherever communities are not too 
vast or too incongruous to apply it, modified or 
unmodified. 

Beyond and outside the circumference of local home 
rule, all was representative for the individual citizen 
in these early times, except in fortunate Rhode Island 
and Connecticut. The voter took part in choosing the 
person or persons who should represent his town or 
county in the legislature, which generally meant in a 
House of Commons; for where, as in Pennsylvania, 
there was no governor's council at all, the colonial legis- 
lature had not two branches. All elections were annual, 
for "where annual elections end tyranny begins," as 
our ancestors used to say. Here the voter's discretion 
ended ; and whatever of official patronage the King, the 
royal governor or the proprietor might not control, the 
legislature absorbed for itself. When, therefore, our 
commonwealths expelled, in 1776, all royal prerogative 
and authority, governors, judges and the rest received 
in most States their new commissions not from the 
people, but, directly or indirectly, from representatives 
of the people. Even delegates to the Continental Con- 
gress were chosen by the several State legislatures. 
And thus came it about that when the Federal Con- 
stitution was framed for our more perfect union, and 
an executive established for the first time for all these 
States combined, delegates in the convention of 1787 



PROVINCIAL POLITICS 297 

thought the selection of a President of the United 
States by the people would be like referring the choice 
of colors to a blind man ; and after barely escaping the 
alternative of a choice by one or both Houses of 
Congress, they congratulated themselves when the 
expedient of electoral colleges was brought forward. 
This, they thought, would lift the momentous choice 
of a nation's chief executive above both people 
and Congress. It was not, therefore, in the eighteenth 
century, as now, public opinion or the manifested 
will of the people which was trusted to dominate 
in the broad affairs of government so much as the 
people's representatives at their own delegated dis- 
cretion. 

Under such conditions, political parties, such as we 
know them in our own times, could have had but little 
range for combination or discipline among those who 
lived still earlier the tame colonial life. Parties, at all 
events, were local in scope, or, at the most, provincial. 
Conventions played an active part in Revolutionary 
times; but these were bodies of delegates fresh from 
the whole people, with fundamental credentials for 
making fundamental changes. They, too, were repre- 
sentative bodies, and for Continental matters the legis- 
lature usually chose. Of party conventions for nom- 
inating party candidates America knew nothing then, 
nor for a long time later. Political conferences, when- 
ever held, bore rather the style of caucus; such con- 
ferences were usually secret and close; and of caucus 
clubs and king caucus, political leaders in our several 
colonies were made aware long before the fateful year 
of the Stamp Act.^ It was a legislative caucus that 
largely led in provincial politics. More than this, Con- 
^See e. g., John Adams's Diary, 1763. 



298 AMERICANS OF 1776 

gressional caucuses nominated Presidents and Vice- 
Presidents of the United States for more than thirty 
years after this Union was set in operation, and until 
the people would submit to such tutelage no longer. 



XX 

SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 

WITH the great Revolutionary struggle of 
our eighteenth century confined to 
Britain's thirteen provinces on the At- 
lantic seaboard, from the Maine district of Massachu- 
setts to Georgia, and with the whole British occupancy 
north of that extreme boundary or southward among 
the tropical islands of the Caribbean Sea destined to 
continue as before, we behold in this rebellious area ex- 
tending westward toward the Alleghanies, provincial 
traits, originating in a separate colonial experience and 
a separate immigration; yet blending speedily into a 
unified concert of action, to which common blood, for 
the most part, common language and lineage, a com- 
mon consuetudinary law, and common systems alike of 
religion, education and politics, gave strong impulse. 
The homogeneousness of our Eastern section is 
memorized, not only by that familiar synonym "New 
England," still largely applied to it, but in the term 
"Yankee," which British redcoats at Boston, we are 
told, used in derision toward them before the fight of 
Bunker Hill. For while "Yankee" — a corruption, per- 
haps, of "English," as the Indians or Indian-French 
pronounced that word — was used in colonial times by 
New Englanders themselves by way of compliment to 
their own talents, it was the jeering strain of "Yankee 
Doodle" (or the "Yankee fool"), riding to town on his 



300 AMERICANS OF 1776 

improvised war steed, a mounted and ill-dressed min- 
ute-man, that flouted him in contrast with the king's 
oflicers, well equipped and uniformed in gorgeous red. 
The real "macaroni," by the way (or fine fellows), of 
our continentals, whose dress befitted a martial occa- 
sion, were in a Maryland regiment, which came to the 
succor of these brethren.^ America's Revolution bred 
certainly a new turn to the song, and they who were 
once ridiculed by a nickname made it their title of dis- 
tinction. Men have won, before and since, in religion 
and politics by such a sign. "Yankee Doodle" was 
played in triumph by New England musicians at Bur- 
goyne's surrender. The name "Yankee" overspread 
later this continent, in the western sweep of New Eng- 
land's keen and aggressive intellect, until in another 
century the name became applied by America to the 
whole free North that fought in our Civil War, and 
by Europe to the whole United States as a nation. 

Such, then, were the northeastern commonwealths 
when colonial vassalage was shaken off, albeit they had 
their own minor distinctions from one another. But 
the middle section, though defined apart, was too hetero- 
geneous in its European elements for a correspond- 
ing epithet to fit; while the English-settled South, 
homogeneous once more, chiefly by reason of its pecul- 
iar plantation and labor systems, showed local varie- 
ties of type — the proud Virginian predominating, — 
with names and epithets apart which have not well 
lasted. 

America's thirteen colonies in 1776 kept within 

^Yet some have opined that both air and the style of words 
antedate our Revolution by more than a century, and that the 
original "Nankey Doodle" riding on a pony w^as in derision of 
Cromwell himself, "Nankey" being changed in later times to 
"Yankee." II Lossing's Field Book, 683. This we may doubt. 



SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 301 

practical reach of the Atlantic Ocean, To lands in the 
Mississippi Valley, both north and south of the Ohio 
River, claims ill-defined were made — by Virginia most 
notably, and by other British colonies besides. But 
beyond the Alleghanies, save for some rough-and- 
ready pioneers from Virginia to the Kentucky territory 
on the south bank of the Ohio, little had been done 
under sanction of the mother country for reclaiming 
the vast interior wilderness. That whole great "coun- 
try of the Ohio," as it was termed, on either side of the 
saffron river to its junction with the still more turbid 
flood of the Mississippi, had, to be sure, been confirmed 
in 1763 to Great Britain, by the peace of Paris and the 
surrender of French dominion therein ; but little at- 
tention was paid to populating this extensive valley 
while England's hold upon her colonies remained. 
Tracts of bounty land had, however, been promised 
to American officers and soldiers, loyal co-operators in 
the French and Indian War; and in 1772 we see Gen- 
eral Phineas Lyman, who had procured a Crown patent 
at London after much lobbying and delay, organizing 
at Hartford his "company of military adventurers," 
and preparing to set out with his comrades for a re- 
mote tract of land at the southwest. 

Yet, while that French and British struggle was in 
progress, Americans had foreseen the advantage that 
would redound from peopling the remote interior of 
this continent. Franklin wrote to George Whitefield, 
that pioneer of Methodism, in July, 1756, the next year 
after Braddock's defeat: "I sometimes wish that you. 
and I were jointly employed by the Crown to settle a 
colony on the Ohio. . . . What a glorious thing it 
would be to settle in that fine country a large, strong 
body of religious and industrious people! What a 



302 AMERICANS OF 1776 

security to the other colonies and advantage to Britain 
by increasing her people, territory, strength and com- 
merce !"^ 



Touching the idiosyncrasies of these thirteen dis- 
tinct colonies, whose independent confederation, fol- 
lowed by a more perfect Union, was the most pregnant 
event of the world's history during that eighteenth 
century, I may recall that Virginia, with her high- 
born pioneers of colonial times, was largely influenced 
by a lofty pride — by the sentiment of honor, generosity 
and the desire to lead — when she espoused a quarrel 
with the mother country, far off in Massachusetts, 
which touched her own concerns but lightly. It was 
Virginia who pressed upon her sister colonies the 
maxim that wrong and oppression committed upon any 
one of the thirteen colonies was a wrong to them all, 
and should be resented unitedly. More passionately, 
but with a like chivalrous sense of honor, did South 
Carolina engage in the common conflict, though of all 
these British dependencies the most acceptable, com- 
mercially, at that time to the home government. With 
greater ardor than Virginia, and hence less fitted for 
leadership than inspiration, she threw herself into the 
Revolutionary struggle, uncalculating, as she has al- 
ways been, in self-sacrifice and devotion. South Caro- 
lina was one of the younger and less populous of our 
colonies, while Virginia was the oldest of them all, 
and had then the most inhabitants. 

With Massachusetts, on the other hand, as with her 
near New England neighbors generally, rebellion was 
the result rather of reason and calculation — of long 

'II Benjamin Franklin's Works, 232. 



SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 303 

irritation under commercial and industrial constraints 
decidedly injurious to her native interests; and of that 
innate dislike, moreover, of Crown and Parliament, 
which had sent Puritan roundheads, dissenters in poli- 
tics and religion, so many out of caste and favor in 
their old homes, to work out their salvation in the re- 
mote wilds of a new world. For New Englanders had 
crossed the ocean, not from love of romance or adven- 
ture, not to amass riches, but rather to wjest a living 
from stingy nature, while experimenting in civil and 
religious institutions after their own ideals of life. 
With a sterile soil to cultivate, they added to agricul- 
ture the pursuits of fishing and navigation; they de- 
veloped an extensive commerce, upon their own capital 
or as factors, and were pushing and persevering. Though 
Britons, and rural Britons withal, in many traits; in 
disposition tenacious each of his own; jealous, per- 
haps encroaching; not easily adaptable to those whose 
ways and habits of life differed from their own; they 
tended strongly among their own set to civil and relig- 
ious equality. Massachusetts, for her own part, never for- 
gave the mother country for cancelling her first charter 
and reducing a commonwealth, once almost indepen- 
dent, to a province ruled by a royal governor and care- 
fully watched. Connecticut and Rhode Island — the 
latter founded by the man whom Massachusetts had 
harshly banished in those earlier days — enjoyed self- 
government largely by the king's favor, and chose 
executives, such as Massachusetts herself had been de- 
prived of choosing. New Hampshire was a junior 
Massachusetts, with less of the urban polish, less 
capital. 

With the middle section of United America, colonial 
growth and founding had differed much from either 



304 AMERICANS OF 1776 

New England or the South. New York and the 
Jerseys were early settled by Dutchmen, Swedes and 
others from Continental Europe; and here, in prosper- 
ous provinces, with the British element at length pre- 
dominating, was seen in course of time a promiscuous 
population, always, on the whole, more immediately 
interested in their own personal advancement and fam- 
ily fortunes than in politics, and somewhat lacking in 
public spirit, save under the stress and special direction 
of external leaders, Pennsylvania, too, had rapidly 
grown in numbers as a great feudal or patriarchal 
province, whose Quaker proprietor aimed to attract 
medley crowds of settlers, from Continental Europe 
as well as Great Britain ; and there, once more, private 
and plodding schemes of life and personal aggran- 
dizement were more apt to interest the average 
citizen than public affairs or the right to participate 
in them. 



Englishmen of the best culture and polish at the 
present day, whatever may be one's innate sense of 
superiority, are found courteous and affable in general 
intercourse; and in that respect their present king sets 
them a good example. But the typical Englishman 
of the eighteenth century has not yet vanished from 
earth; and racial characteristics were reproduced 
among our British-American settlers of purer stock 
while the colonial condition lasted. Men we still 
meet with in the United States who draw out in rigid 
lengths like a telescope, according to the presumable 
range or importance of objects within the field of per- 
sonal vision. A well-bred Britisher of the eighteenth 
century would carefully adjust himself toward those 



SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 305 

with whom he came in external contact ; with a formal 
bow to this, a chilling indifference to that one, trem- 
ulous and effusive warmth of devotion to a third — 
great sticklers, all of them, for form and proper eti- 
quette, on occasions, and insistent upon exacting from 
inferiors their own individual due. At the root of 
such behavior was a rigid regard for the proprieties of 
life and a self-respect tending to pomp and disdain. 
The English church catechism, admirable in its com- 
pend for the common folk, lays great stress upon Chris- 
tian behavior: "My duty towards my neighbor is to 
love him as myself and to do unto all men as I would 
they should do unto me" — the golden rule first of all, 
as it ever should be, and admirable for all times and 
conditions. But what follows in specification is for 
inferiors, and inculcates a submissive deportment — 
to honor parents and the civil authority, ''to submit 
myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors 
and masters," and "to order myself lowly and rever- 
ently to all my betters." But how shall betters com- 
port themselves ? How far ought a lord to condescend 
toward those of low estate? On that point the cate- 
chism is silent. Perhaps the average man who must 
reverence reaches his own selfish solution by ex- 
acting submission and reverence from those who 
look up to him, and who cannot disdain his station 
in life. 

In practice, each Briton took his recompense as he 
might. The fresh collegian who played the fag to his 
elder was the petty tyrant in turn with another class. 
In Sheridan's "Rivals," a play first brought out in 
London during the famous year of Lexington and 
Bunker Hill, the master abuses his valet, while the 
valet consoles himself by kicking the buttoned boy of 



3o6 AMERICANS OF 1776 

all work. Novelists who describe English life and 
manners of that era — Fielding and Smollett as contem- 
poraries, Sir Walter Scott in the retrospect, and the 
rest — seem not far out of the way, when they show 
their fellow-countryman ready to browbeat and treat 
with insolence any stranger who crosses his path ; but 
if the latter but stands his ground, fights with fists, 
sword or cudgel, and gets the better of his antagonist 
in a close encounter, he wins respect, and from that 
vantage-ground may gain, perchance, a life-long friend- 
ship. For surly and overbearing as old John Bull 
might show himself on a first and casual acquaintance, 
purpling with pride, and mottled over with prejudices 
like pimples against him who bore no letters of intro- 
duction, he appreciates success, especially when he may 
himself profit by courting the successful ; and he learns, 
however awkwardly, to become gracious, friendly, 
flattering, if only he may hold his lead. Such, at least, 
was the typical Englishman in the age of our Revolu- 
tion and the eighteenth century. 



But America, as I have suggested, was complex, 
composite — its nature dashed in destination with the 
blood of many other Caucasian peoples, despite a pure 
Anglo-Saxon lineage. Here in the broad wilderness 
of this new world was ample field afforded for new 
and varying manners, for a new political experiment; 
and if this earlier colonizing age still kept somewhat to 
social inequalities, as in Europe, anything indigenous 
like monarchy or a settled nobility with ranks and 
titles had long since proved impossible. Sooner or 
later in aboriginal America the crown and sceptre must 
have disappeared as symbols of public authority. For 



SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 307 

in each of these thirteen colonies the lower House, or 
legislature, and popular representation had burst 
forth for a local ascendancy; in more than one colony 
the people chose their own executive, while in others 
jealousy of home rule was strong, because a cor- 
responding right of choice was denied them. To be 
sure, there was aristocracy in America, in that eigh- 
teenth century, and much of it; but the milder British 
type of Whig had more real influence here than that 
of Tory in such a set. Yet Toryism ruled then in 
Great Britain for the most part, and, indeed, while 
George III. survived; and as late as 1815 an Anglican 
bishop said before an assenting House of Peers that 
he knew not what the mass of the people of any 
country had to do with the laws except to obey 
them. 

It was characteristic of our colonial age that, at all 
events, decent people, even in a large town or city, had 
a speaking acquaintance with one another, whatever 
might be the constraint upon a familiar social inter- 
course. A stranger on the streets was at once pointed 
out. And people in the same social set mingled un- 
ceremoniously in company, with their herds of sons 
and daughters. Yet the line of social demarcation was 
pretty strongly drawn while America lived under the 
king; and even in the smaller towns and rural neigh- 
borhoods each household knew and kept its place, with 
little, comparatively, of that envious rivalry which set 
in afterwards with the Republic. Patricians took largely 
the social lead and their sons inherited an influence. 
Even in politics, while families were so large and 
united, as well as localized, family connections and 
influence must have counted for much, and the voters 
and mana2:ers showed their sense of the fact. 



3o8 AMERICANS OF 1776 

Tradesmen were identified in tnost of these com- 
munities by their dress and submissive manners, 
though self-respecting and strongly disposed to self- 
improvement. To such applied the saying, "It is bet- 
ter to be well-remembered than well born;" for men in 
many of our thirteen colonies rose from humble be- 
ginnings to be public leaders in the great constructive 
work of the age; and it was to the lasting renown of 
their social patrons that men of such sterling worth 
and character were encouraged to work their way 
upward as good citizens and co-operate in plans for 
the public good. Yet, as a general rule, fathers and 
sons accepted alike the condition to which they were 
born, and for the present were content with the dress 
and manners belonging to it. Such a state of things 
must have tended to free, simple and unconstrained 
intercourse on matters of mutual interest, without the 
fear of compromising one's visiting acquaintance or 
family alliances.^ 

Historians tell us that only one-fifth of the people of 
all these colonies had in 1775 some other language than 
the English for their mother tongue." Under such a 
condition, British ideas and British institutions must 
have strongly prevailed among the sires of our Revo- 
lution. But with the Union of our own times it is far 
different ; for this broad country long since became the 
general home and refuge of the oppressed of all 

'Mechanics, we are told, wore almost everywhere their leather 
aprons on week days; and the red flannel jacket and cheap plush 
or leather breeches were other accepted badges of inferiority. 
"Leather-apron Club" was a term applied by Philadelphia's upper 
class, perhaps to Franklin's Junto, and certainly in scorn of up- 
start commoners emerging into influence. 

''Immigrants from France, Sweden, Holland and Germany, in 
relative order. 



SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 309 

Europe; and a most competent authority lately esti- 
mates that at least one half of our population to-day, 
instead of one-fifth, were born where a language not 
English was spoken.^ The twentieth century will 
hardly run its course with the United States rejoined 
to Great Britain, in any race alliance against the other 
powers of the earth. 



America, earlier even than the Revolutionary War, 
had attracted the attention of seers and sages in the 
Old World, and omens abounded of its coming great- 
ness. In such books as Charles Sumner's "Prophetic 
Voices," we may see quoted, nearly a century later, the 
choicest of those predictions of rising glory and illus- 
trious empire which Saxon denizens of a new world 
were destined to fulfil. The verses of Cowley and 
Bishop Berkeley are still to us an inspiration, as they 
were to our forefathers. Very close, moreover, to the 
date of our momentous struggle, the versatile Lord 
Karnes of Scotland wrote, in 1774, in one of his vol- 
umes of speculative prose upon the history of mankind : 
"Our North American colonies are in a flourishing con- 
dition, increasing rapidly in population and opulence. 
The colonists have the spirit of a free people and are 
inflamed with patriotism. Their population will equal 
Britain and Ireland in less than a century; and they 
will then be a match for the mother country, if they 
choose to be independent." This passage was among 
those cited by Americans as an incitement to fulfil the 
presage. To be sure, the contest for independence, 
here prophesied as though far of¥, was actually quite 
close at hand ; nor did Lord Kames forecast rightly the 

'U. S. Labor Report, 1901 (Carroll D. Wright). 



3IO AMERICANS OF 1776 

result of revolution to these colonies. "They will not 
incline," he predicts, "to a kingly government; but 
neither will they unite, like the Dutch or Swiss, since 
each colony is already prepared for its own republicani 
government by merely dropping the governor who rep- 
resents the Crown." There was, indeed, such an ele- 
ment here at work, the centrifugal of State pride; but 
a countervailing force operated to combine when com- 
mon grievances and a common danger roused colonies 
so happily alike in customs and institutions. Ameri- 
can independence became worth achieving, because 
with independence came a lasting and comprehensive 
union. 

Whether our illustrious Scotchman drew his inspi- 
ration from immediate observers in these distant de- 
pendencies I shall not inquire, but certain it is that a 
native-born American no less famous than Franklin 
had imparted to him his own ideas more than ten 
years earlier. "I have long been of opinion," writes 
he to Lord Kames in 1760, "that the foundations of 
future grandeur and stability to the British Empire 
lie in America ; that those foundations are broad and 
strong enough to support the greatest political struc- 
ture that human wisdom ever yet erected."^ These 
words were penned while Franklin was at heart a loyal 
Briton and planned for America's development in full 
allegiance. Six years later, when he visited Germany 
with a friend and made a hasty tour of its chief cities 
and universities, he met at Gottingen the Biblical ex- 
pert Michaelis, who in course of a dinner conversation 
expressed a belief he had lately stated to some London 
friends, that the American colonies would one day 
shake themselves loose from England. Franklin an- 

^III Benjamin Franklin's Work, 39. 



SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 311 

swered earnestly, "Then you were mistaken; the 
Americans have too much love for their mother coun- 
try," "I believe it," responded the German professor, 
"but almighty interest would soon outweigh that love 
or extinguish it altogether." Franklin could not deny 
that this might be, but he still pronounced a secession 
impossible.^ 



It is thus that men, the most profound and broad- 
reaching of all ages, live, after all, from year to year, 
unaware of the broad undercurrent that bears them on- 
ward in logical consequences to the destiny they some- 
how comprehend, but cannot yet recognize as ap- 
proaching. Interest was the great irresistible force 
that must in time have detached us from the mother 
country, to gain ascendancy in this continent for a new 
lead and new ideas of government. Hence, the pres- 
sure of compulsion by the King and Parliament, 
at a time highly opportune for resistance, made Eng- 
land's conquest from France a conquest in effect for 
American benefit. The revenge of France, in aiding 
children to rebel against the parent, impelled us on- 
ward to freedom ; and so was it with French influence, 
a quarter century later, when Napoleon, with a new 
hatred of England, sold us Louisiana, and so advanced 
our dominion of this continent another stage, to the 
base of the Rocky Mountains. 

Though the strongest of political bonds, the filial one, 
united these colonies with Great Britain in early times, 
it was fatal to the maintenance of British sovereignty 
here that British people at home were indifferent to 

•J. G. Rosengarten's "Franklin in Germany," citing from the 

"Biography of Michaelis." 



312 AMERICANS OF 1776 

the welfare of these colonies, while, with British rulers 
and ministry, the interest and wishes of a few London 
merchants and financiers had more influence than 
thousands of colonial subjects could muster, so far 
away. It was thus that the African slave trade was 
kept up in these colonies, supplying a labor market for 
the sake of plantation products, quite in disregard of 
all humane disposition here to check it. Once, when 
a jail distemper was brought over and spread through 
Virginia by the ships transporting convicts, so that 
many innocent people died in consequence, Virginia's 
House of Burgesses passed a law obliging vessels that 
arrived from Europe with the distemper to go into 
quarantine. But two merchants in London, con- 
tractors in that importation, objecting that such a re- 
quirement would increase the expenses of their voyage, 
the Virginia law was disapproved by the home govern- 
ment and failed of effect. If such is sovereign power 
exercised from across the seas, where children and 
colonists have been largely indulged with representa- 
tive assemblies of their own and with suffrage and self- 
rule in local affairs, what must that sovereignty be 
when the millions ruled are of a different race, deemed 
inferior? 

It is not so much from any general intent to op- 
press, as from the innate covetousness of a few and 
the heednessless of the many, that distant dependen- 
cies are ruled despotically, not having a voice or a 
vote in the home government which lays imperious 
burdens upon them. Without steam appliances for 
travel by land or sea, without the ligature of electric 
cables or telegraph wires, our thirteen subject colonies 
were in 1776 farther, much farther, in effect, from 
Europe, from their sovereign King and Parliament, 



SYMPTOMS OF INDEPENDENCE 313 

though close to this Atlantic shore, than are dwellers 
across our continent at the present day who border the 
Pacific. But practical distance in any case makes in- 
difference even among the well disposed of an external 
empire. Franklin, while in London in 1773, noted as 
the great defect of the British people he met a want of 
attention to what was passing in so remote a country 
as America — an unwillingness to read about them, and 
a disposition to postpone even what they would at last 
have inevitably to consider. And with all this igno- 
rance and indifference went, as he observed, a pur- 
blindness of comprehension among the ruling set ; they 
failed to comprehend that America would act except 
from a sordid self-interest ; and a mere threepence on 
a pound of tea — a beverage of which one consumed 
perhaps ten pounds a year — seemed to them an impo- 
sition too trivial to be resisted. Yet, as Burke clearly 
perceived, a love of freedom was the predominating 
feature of these far-off Americans, scions of the Saxon 
race, and hence these colonies would become suspicious, 
restive and intractable, whenever they saw efforts made 
at home to deprive them of freedom by force or chi- 
cancery. "I think the Parliament of Great Britain," 
wrote Washington in 1774, "hath no more right to 
put their hands in my pocket, without my consent, than 
I have to put my hands into yours for money." Sam- 
uel Adams advanced the same idea; and he added, 
in 1780, "when a whole people say we will be free, 
it is difficult to demonstrate that they are in the 
wrong."^ 

Whenever, then, it came to compulsion of these col- 
onies distance would prove a constant thwart to des- 
potism. "With three thousand miles of ocean between 
^I Chastellux Travels. 



314 AMERICANS OF 1776 

you and them," said Burke, "no contrivance can pre- 
vent the effect of this distance in weakening govern- 
ment. Divine justice interposes to rebuke man's 
imperial arrogance and says, 'Thus far shalt thou go, 
and no farther.' "^ 

*II Burke's Works, 120. 



INDEX 



Adams, Herbert B., 204, 205. 
Adams, John, 127, 149, 220, 289. 
Adams, John Q., 149. 
Adams, Samuel, 9, 52, 86, 97, 

220, 242, 313. 
Alston, Washington, 171. 
Amesbury, 63. 
Annapolis, 113, I75- 
Appleton, Nathan, 229. 

Baltimore, 53, I75, 178-180, 243. 
Baltimore, Lord, 49. 
Bancroft, George, i. 
Bates, Mr., iii. 
Berkeley, Bishop, 309. 
Berkeley, Governor, 199, 218. 
Berkeley, Mr., 270. 
Bernard, Governor, 220. 
Blackstone, Sir William, 134. 
Blackstone, William, 245. 
Boston, 9, 19, 26, 55, 57, 62, 67, 

75, 105, 108, 17s, 177-180, 189, 

197. 
Botetourt, Lord, 45. 
Boylston, Nicholas, 230. 
Brooklyn, 112. 
Brooks, Phillips, 267. 
Brown College, 216, 226. 
Buckminster, Joseph, 222. 
Bunker Hill, 130, 169, 305. 
Burgoyne. General, 221, 300. 
Burke, Edmund, 182, 260, 268, 

271, 285, 313, 314. 
Byles, Mather, 228. 



Canada, 4, 5. 
Charles H., 10. 
Charleston, 11, 29, 53. 
Chastellux, Marquis de, 6, 41, 

51, 97, 225, 226, 229, 230, 237, 

263, 313. 
Chatham, Earl of. (See Pitt, 

William.) 
Chicago, 3. 
Clap, Thomas, 232. 
Concord, 63. 

Copley, John S., 86, 170. 
Cowley, Abraham, 309. 
Craigie house, 51. 
Crawford, Thomas, 172. 
Curran, John P., 13. 

Dartmouth College, 211, 226. 
Delancey, Governor, 114. 
Dickinson, John, 129, 149. 
Dwight, Timothy, 128, 133, 222. 

Eliot, Charles W., 219. 

Eliot, Rev. Dr., 251. 

Edes, Ben., 152. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 126, 246. 

Fielding, Henry, 306. 

Fishkill. 50. 

Fiske, John, 184. 

France, 4-6, 311. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 17, 39, 
64, 69, 70, 74, 89, loi, 116, 
127, 138, 150, 164, 176, 189, 
204, 205, 253, 256, 263, 301, 
310, 313- 



3i6 



INDEX 



Freemasonry, 264. 
Freneau, Philip, 128. 

Garrick, David, iii. 
George III., 7, 90, 165, 307. 
Gottingen, 310. 
Greenough, Horatio, 172. 
Grund, 196. 

Hale, Nathan, 223. 
Hallam, Lewis, 113. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 63, 129, 

227. 
Hancock, John, 52, 86, 131, 141, 

220, 231. 
Hancock, Thomas, 177, 231. 
Harrison, Benjamin, 223. 
Hartford, 61, 64. 
Harvard College, 70, 100, 106, 

132, 189, 207, 216, 217, 219- 

222, 229-236, 243, 247, 255. 
Henry, Patrick, 2, 100, 127, 239. 
Hersey, Ezekiel, 230. 
Hopkins, Stephen, 70. 
Holyoke, Edward, 219, 222. 
Houdon, 172. 
Howard, John, 182. 
Hutchinson, Thomas, 128, 144. 

Jay, John, 227. 

Jefferson, Thomas, lOO, 106, 

127, 135, 173, 209, 223, 263. 
Jerrold, Douglas, 272. 
Johnoon, Samuel, 260. 
Junto, 78, 256, 308. 

Karnes, Lord, 309, 310. 

Kings (Columbia) College, 216, 

226. 
Knox, Henry, 122. 



Langdon, Samuel, 222. 
Lexington, 22, 305. 
Livingston, William, 223. 
Locke, Samuel, 222, 229, 232. 
Lyman, Phineas, 301. 
Lynn, 88. 

Macaulay, Thomas B., i. 
Madison, Bishop, 119. 
Madison, James, 149, 209, 224, 

226. 
Mansfield, Lord, 13. 
Marblehead, 175, 181. 
Marshall, John, 'zzz- 
Mather, Cotton and Increase, 

126. 
Mather, Samuel, 229. 
McCauley, Catherine, iii. 
McKinley, William, 4. 
Mein. John, 122, 256. 
Michaelis, 310. 
Monroe, James, 209, 224. 
Monticello, 52. 
Mount Vernon, 51, 78. 
Murray, John, 275. 

Napoleon, 260, 311. 

New England, 3, 299. 

New Haven (see Yale Col- 
lege), 26. 

New York City, 3, 15, 19. 25, 
30, 56, 57, ^1, 75, 177, 266. 

Ogilvie, Mr., 131. 

Otis, James, 64, 79, 127. 

Paine, Thomas, 129, 133. 
Parkman, Francis, I. 
Peale, Charles W., 171. 
Penn, William. 49. 
Pennsylvania College, 205, 2i6, 
225, 231. 



INDEX 



317 



Pepys, Samuel, 10. 
Peters, William, 228. 
Philadelphia, 3, 16, 19, 24, 28, 

53, 55, 56, 64, 66, ^z, 85, 105, 

120, 176, 178. 
Phillips, John, 228. 
Pickering, Thomas, 220. 
Pitt, William, 7, 165, 170. 
Plymouth, 48. 
Portsmouth, 81, 82. 
Princeton College, 216, 225, 255. 
Propert, Mr., 108. 
Providence, 28, 39. 

Quincy, Josiah, 231. 

Ramsay, David, 186. 
Randolph, Peyton, 223. 
Richardson, Samuel, 41. 
Richmond, 252. 
Rittenhouse, David, 263. 
Revere, Paul, 79, 164. 
Rochambeau, Count, 243. 
Rush, William, 172. 

Scott, Walter, 306. 
Selby, Mr., 108. 
Sheridan, Richard B., 305. 
Smith, William, 225, 228-231. 
Smollett, Tobias G., 306. 
Somerset case, 13. 
Sons of Liberty, 8, 266. 
Springs, Stafford, 191. 
Springs, Sulphur, 192. 
Stavers, Mr., 81. 
Stiles, Ezra, 223. 
Stuyvesant, Peter, 190. 



Tammany, 106, 264. 
Thomas, Isaiah, 143. 
Thucydides, 6. 
Tory, 8, 34, 76, 289, 307. 
Trumbull, John, 128, 170. 
Trumbull, Jonathan, 220, 222. 
Tyler, John, 223. 

Van Rensselaer, Patroon, 49. 

Warren, Joseph, 79, 265. 
Washington, George, 20, 78, 

99, 123, 129, 131, 141, 168, 190, 

209, 223, 229, 251, 252, 261, 

265, 313- 
Wesley, Charles and John, 245. 
West, Benjamin, 170, 171, 177. 
Wheelock, Eleazar, 227. 
Whig, 8, 34, 76, 287, 289, 307. 
Whitefield, George, 245, 301. 
William and Mary College, 45, 

206, 216, 218, 223, 224, 288, 

290. 
Williamsburg, 9, 24, 45, 55, 79, 

106, 113, 212, 218. 
Wilson, Rachel, 250. 
Winthrop, John, 65, 229. 
Witherspoon, John, 225, 226, 

228, 229, 246. 
Wooster, David, 223. 
Wright, Mrs., in. 
Wythe, G®orge, 223. 

Yale College, 207, 216, 217, 231- 

236. 
Yankee, 299. 



t\' 



H 1-^ 



" 88 ■«• 



